INDIAN PHILOSOPHY 

BY 

S. RADHAKRISHNAN 

 

" We are fortunate in that Professor Radhakrishnan is evidently 
deeply read in the Philosophy of the West, and shows considerable 
acquaintance with general Western literature ; a happy blend of 
Eastern conceptions with Western terminology makes the book 
intelligible even to the inexpert, and, it need hardly be added, 
instructive.'* The Times 

" In this very interesting, Incid, and admirably written book . . . 
the author has given us an interpretation of the Philosophy of 
India written by an Indian scholar of wide culture." Daily News. 

44 It is among the most considerable of the essays in interpre- 
tation that have come from Indian scholars in recent years. 
English readers are continually on the look-out for a compendium 
of Indian thought wntten by a modern with a gift for lucid 
statement . . . Here is the book for them." New Statesman. 

41 The first volume takes us to the decay of Buddism in India 
after dealing with the Vedas, the Upanisads, and the Hindu con- 
temporaries of the early Buddists. The work is admirably done*" 
BBRTRAND RUSSELL in the Nation. 

"This book marks an epoch in speculative thought. It is 
probably the first important interpretation of the Eastern mind 
from within." Glasgow Herald. 

44 A most systematic account of the subject. In every section 
and subsection of the book we find a very readable exposition- 
succinct and yet complete of the subject matter concerned. The 
accounts are uniformly vivid, dispassionate, and well balanced." 
MAHAMAHOPJtoHYlYA DR. SANGANATH JHA in the Hindustan 
Review. 

44 Brilliant performance. As an attempt to give a true philo- 
sophical interpretation of Indian thought, it is of very great 
value." Dr. B. M. BARNA in the Hindu. 

14 A standard work on the subject." Indian Social Reformer. 

" Not a formal history and a dry intellectual discussion of ideas, 
but a work of feeling as well as of thought, an exposition of living 
interest. The English is excellent." The Quest. 

" As a work of philosophical interpretation and criticism, it is an 
epoch-making publication . . . indispensable to every student of 
Indian philosophy." The Mysore University Magazine. 

44 It sets forth the philosophic background of Indian religions and 
social life with a fulness of knowledge and concreteness of detail 
that is perhaps unique. Many things which in the ordinary text- 
books are obscure and even unintelligible here become rational. 
The book is one of deep and exact scholarship."- Ho/6om Review. 

44 Professor Radhakrishnan's beautifully written story of the 
changing thought of the Vedic teachers, the Jainat, and the 
Buddhists will more than repay the study of any specialist, but, 
beyond this, it is of absorbing interest to those of us who do 
not wish to make ourselves out to be either philosophers or 
Orientalists. A delightful volume." Time* of India. 



THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF THE UPANISADS 



BY 

S. RADHAKRISHNAN 

WITH A FOREWORD BY 

RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

AND AN INTRODUCTION BY 

EDMOND HOLMES 

AUTHOR OF " THE CREED OF BUDDHA," ETC. 



LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. i 

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



{All rights reserved) 



Atfl> ITOKCMO 



DEDICATION 
TO 

THE REV. W. SKINNER, M.A., D.D., ETC. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

I AM much obliged to Dr. Rabindranath Tagore and Mr. 
Edmond Holmes for their kindness in writing the Foreword 
and the Introduction to this reprint of the section on the 
Upanisads from my Indian Philosophy. 

The different, though not opposed, estimates brought 
together in this book will, I trust, help the reader to appre- 
ciate the meaning and value of the teaching of these ancient 
scriptures of India. 

S.R. 

CALCUTTA, 
March 1924. 



FOREWORD 

NOT being a scholar or a student of philosophy, I do not 
feel justified in writing a critical appreciation of a book 
dealing with the philosophy of the Upani$ads. What I 
venture to do is to express my satisfaction at the fact that 
my friend, Professor Radhakrishnan, has undertaken to 
explain the spirit of the Upaniads to English readers. 

It is not enough that one should know the meaning of 
the words and the grammar of the Sanskrit texts in order 
to realise the deeper significance of the utterances that have 
come to us across centuries of vast changes, both of the inner 
as well as the external conditions of life. Once the language 
in which these were written was living, and therefore the 
words contained in them had their full context in the life 
of the people of that period, who spoke them. Divested of 
that vital atmosphere, a large part of the language of these 
great texts offers to us merely its philological structure and 
not lif e's subtle gesture which can express through suggestion 
all that is ineffable. 

. Suggestion can neither have fixed rules of grammar nor 
the rigid definition of the lexicon so easily available to the 
scholar. Suggestion has its unanalysable code which finds 
its depth of explanation in the living hearts of the people , 
who use it. Code words philologicaUy treated appear 
childish, and one must know that all those experiences which 
are not realised through the path of reason, but immediately 
through an inner vision, must use some kind of code word 
for their expression. All poetry is full of such words, and 
therefore poems of one language can never be properly 
translated into other languages, nay, not even re-spoken in 
the same language. 

., For an illustration let me refer to that stanza of Keats* 

u 



x PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

"Ode to a Nightingale/' which ends with the following 
lines :-^ 

The same that oft-times hath 

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

All these words have their synonyms in our Bengali 
language. But if through their help I try to understand 
these lines or express the idea contained in them, the result 
would be contemptible. Should I suffer from a sense of race 
superiority in our own people, and have a low opinion of 
English literature, I could do nothing better to support my 
case than literally to translate or to paraphrase in our own 
tongue all the best poems written in English. 

Unfortunately, the Upaniads have met with such treat- 
ment in some parts of the West, and the result is typified 
disastrously in a book like Cough's Philosophy of the 
Upani$ads. My experience of philosophical writings being 
extremely meagre, I may be wrong when I say that this is 
the only philosophical discussion about the Upaniads in 
English, but, at any rate, the lack of sympathy and respect 
displayed in it for these some of the most sacred words 
that have ever issued from the human mind, is amazing. 

Though many of the symbolical expressions used in the 
Upaniads can hardly be understood to-day, or are sure to 
be wrongly interpreted, yet the messages contained in these, 
like some eternal source of light, still illumine and vitalise 
the religious mind of India. They -are not associated with 
any particular religion, but they have the breadth of a 
universal soil that can supply with living sap all religions 
which have any spiritual ideal hidden at their core, or 
apparent in their fruit and foliage. Religions, which have 
their different standpoints, each claim them for their own 
support. 

This has been possible because the Upaniads are based 
not -upon theological reasoning, but on experience of spiritual 
life. And life is not dogmatic ; in it opposing forces are recon- 
ciled id$as of non-dualism and dualism, the infinite and the 
finite, do not exclude each other. Moreover, the Upani?ads 
do not represent the spiritual experience of any one great 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS xi 

individual, but of a great age of enlightenment which has a 
complex and collective manifestation, like that of the starry 
world. Different creeds may find their sustenance from 
them, but can never set sectarian boundaries round them ; 
generations of men in our country, no mere students of 
philosophy, but seekers of life's fulfilment/ may make living 
use of the texts, but can never exhaust them of their fresh- 
ness of meaning. 

For such men the Upaniad-ideas are not wholly abstract, 
like those belonging to the region of pure logic. They are 
concrete, like all truths realised through life. The idea of 
Brahma when judged from the view-point of intellect is an 
abstraction, but it is concretely real for those who have the 
direct vision to see it. Therefore the consciousness of the 
reality of Brahma has boldly been described to be as real 
as the consciousness of an amlaka fruit held in one's palm, 
And the Upanisad says : 

Yato vaco nivartante aprSpya manasa saha 
Anandam brahmago vidvan na bibheti kadacana. 

From Him come back baffled both words and mind. But he who 
realises the joy of Brahma is free from fear. 

Cannot the same thing be said about light itself to men 
who may by some mischance live all through their life in an 
underground world cut off from the sun's rays ? They must 
know that words can never describe to them what light is, 
and mind, through its reasoning faculty, can never even 
understand how one must have a direct vision to realise it 
intimately and be glad and free from fear. 

We often hear the complaint that the Brahma of the 
Upaniads is described to us mostly as a bundle of negations. 
Are we not driven to take the same course ourselves when 
a blind man asks for a description of light ? Have we not 
to say in such a case that light has neither sound, nor taste, 
nor form, nor weight, nor resistance, nor can it be known 
through any process of analysis ? Of course it can be seen ; 
but what is the use of saying this to one who has no eyes ? 
He may take that statement on trust without understanding 
in the least what it means, or may altogether disbelieve it, 
even suspecting in us some abnormality. 



xii PHILOSOPHY OF TfiDE UPANISADS 

Does the truth of the fact that a blind man has missed 
^he perfect development of what should be normal about 
his eyesight depend for its proof upon the fact that a larger 
number of men are not blind? The very first creature 
which suddenly groped into the possession of its eyesight 
had the right to assert that light was a reality. In the 
human world there may be very few who have their spiritual 
eyes open, but, in spite of the numerical preponderance of 
those who cannot see, their want of vision must not be cited 
as an evidence of the negation of light. 

In the Upaniads we find the note of certainty about 
the spiritual meaning of existence. In the very paradoxical 
nature of the assertion that we can never know Brahma, but 
can realise Him, there lies the strength of conviction that 
comes from personal experience. They aver that through 
our joy we know the reality that is infinite, for the test by 
which reality is apprehended is joy. Therefore in the 
Upaniads Satyam and Anandam are one. Does not this 
idea harmonise with our everyday experience ? 

The self of mine that limits my truth within myself 
confines me to a narrow idea of my own personality. When 
through some great experience I transcend this boundary 
I find joy. The negative fact of the vanishing of the fences 
of self has nothing in itself that is delightful. But my joy 
proves that the disappearance of self brings me into touch 
with a great positive truth whose nature is infinitude. My 
love makes me understand that I gain a great truth when I 
realise myself in others, and therefore I am glad. This has 
been thus expressed in the I&opaniad : 

Yas tu sarv&Qi bhutani atmany ev&nupatyati 
Sarvabhute$u ctm&nam tato na vijugupsate. 

He who sees all creatures in himself, and himself in all creatures, 
no longer remains concealed. 

His Truth is revealed in him when it comprehends Truth 
in others. And we know that in such a case we are ready 
for the utmost self-sacrifice through abundance of love. 

It has been said by some that the element of personality 
has altogether keen ignored in the Brahma o|pJie Upani?ads, 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS aiii 

and thus our own personality, according to them, finds no 
response in the Infinite Truth. But then, what is the 
meaning of the exclamation : " Vedihametam puruam 
mahntam. / have known him who is the Supreme Person.. 
Did not the sage who pronounced it at the same time pro* 
claim that we are all Amrtasya Putrah, the sons of the 
Immortal ? 

Elsewhere it has been declared : Tarn vedyam purufam 
veda yatha ma vo mrtyuh parivyathah. Know him, the Person 
who only is to be known, so that death may not grieve thee. 
The meaning is obvious. We are afraid of death, because 
we are afraid of the absolute cessation of our personality* 
Therefore, if we realise the Person as the ultimate reality 
which we know in everything that we know, we find our 
own personality in the bosom of the eternal. 

There are numerous verses in the Upaniads which 
speak of immortality. I quote one of these : 

Esa devo vivakarm mahtm 
Sad5 jan&nm hjxlaye sannivitab 
Hfda man!& manasibhiklpto 
Ya etad vidur amptas te bhavanti. 

This is the God who is the world-worker, the supreme soul, who 
always dwells in the heart of all men, those who know him 
through their mind, and the heart that is full of the certainty 
of knowledge, become immortal. 

To realise with the heart and mind the divine being who 
dwells within us is to be assured of everlasting life. It is 
mahatma, the great reality of the inner being, which is vi&va- 
karma, the world-worker, whose manifestation is in the outer 
work occupying all time and space. 

* Our own personality also consists of an inner truth which 
expresses itself in outer movements. When we realise, not 
merely through our intellect, but through our heart strong 
with the strength of its wisdom, that Mahatma, the Infinite 
Person, dwells in the Person which is in me, we cross over 
the region of death. Death only concerns our limited self ; 
when the Person in us is realised in the Supreme Person, 
then the limits of our self lose for us their finality. 

The question necessarily arises, what is the significance 



xiv PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

of this sell of ours ? Is it nothing but an absolute bondage 
for us ? 

If in our language the sentences were merely for express- 
ing grammatical rules, then the using of such a language 
would be a slavery to fruitless pedantry. But, because 
language has for its ultimate object the expression of ideas, 
our *mind gains its freedom through it, and the bondage of 
gratomar itself is a help towards this freedom. 

/ If this world were ruled only by some law of forces, then 
it would certainly have hurt our mind at every step and 
there would be nothing that could give us joy for its own 
sake. But the Upaniad says that from Anandam, from 
an inner spirit of Bliss, have come out all things, and by it 
they are maintained. Therefore, in spite of contradictions, 
we have our joy in life, we have experiences that carry their 
final value for us. 

It has been said that the Infinite Reality finds its revela- 
tion in dnanda-rupam amrtom, in the deathless form of joy. 
The supreme end of our personality also is to express itself 
in its creations. But works done through the compulsion 
of necessity, or some passion that blinds us and drags us 
on with its impetus, are fetters for our soul ; they do not 
express the wealth of the infinite in us, but merely our want 
or our weakness. 

Our soul has its dnandam, its consciousness of the infinite, 
which is blissful. This seeks its expression in limits which, 
when they assume the harmony of forms and the balance 
of movements, constantly indicate the limitless. Such ex- 
pression is freedom, freedom from the barrier of obscurity. 
Such a medium of limits we have in our self which is our 
medium of expression. It is for us to develop this into 
dnanda-rupam amrtam, an embodiment of deathless joy, and 
only then the infinite in us can no longer remain obscured* 

This self of ours can also be moulded to give expression 
to the personality of a business man, or a fighting man, or 
a working man, but in these it does not reveal our supreme 
reality, and therefore we remain shut up in a prison of our 
own construction. Self finds its dnanda-riipam, which is 
its freedom in revelation, when it reveals a truth that 
transcends self, like a lamp revealing light which goes far 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS xv 

beyond its material limits, proclaiming its kinship with the 
sun. When our self is illuminated with the light of lcxve,j 
then the negative aspect of its separateness with others! 
loses its finality, and then our relationship with others is 
no longer that of competition and conflict, but of sympathy 
and co-operation. 

I feel strongly that this, for us, is the teaching of the 
Upani$ads, and that this teaching is very much needed in 
the present age for those who boast of the freedom enjoj&d 
by their nations, using that freedom for building up a dark 
world of spiritual blindness, where the passions of greed and 
hatred are allowed to roam unchecked, having for their 
allies deceitful diplomacy and a wide-spread propaganda of 
falsehood, where the soul remains caged and the self battenfc 
upon the decaying flesh of its victims. 

RABINDRANATH TAGORE. 



INTRODUCTION 

PROFESSOR RADHAKRISHNAN'S work on Indian Philosophy* 
the first volume of which has recently appeared, meets a 
want which has long been felt. The Western mind finds a 
difficulty in placing itself at what I may call the dominant 
standpoint of Indian thought, a difficulty which is the out- 
come of centuries of divergent tradition, and which therefore 
opposes a formidable obstacle to whatever attempt may be 
made by Western scholarship and criticism to interpret the 
speculative philosophy of India. If we of the West are to 
enter with some measure of sympathy and understanding 
into the ideas which dominate, and have long dominated, 
the Indian mind, India herself must expound them to us. 
Our interpreter must be an Indian critic who combines the 
acuteness and originality of the thinker with the learning 
and caution of the scholar, and who has also made such a 
study of Western thought and Western letters as will enable 
him to meet his readers on common ground. If, in addition 
to these qualifications, he can speak to us in a Western 
language, he will be the ideal exponent of that mysterious 
philosophy which is known to most of us more by hearsay 
than by actual acquaintance, and which, so far as we have 
any knowledge of it, alternately fascinates and repels us. 

All these requirements are answered by Professor Radha- 
krishnan. A clear and deep thinker, an acute critic and an 
erudite scholar, he is admirably qualified for the task which 
he has set himself of expounding to a " lay " audience the 
main movements of Indian thought. His knowledge of 
Western thought and letters makes it easy for him to get 
into touch with a Western audience ; and for the latter 
purpose he has the further qualification, which he shares 
with other cultured Hindus, of being a master of the English 
language and an accomplished writer of English prose. 

2 * 



2 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 

But the first volume of Indian Philosophy contains 
nearly 700 closely printed pages, and costs a guinea ; and it 
is not every one, even of those who are interested in Indian 
thought, who can afford to devote so much time to serious 
study, while the price, though relatively most reasonable, 
is beyond the means of many readers. That being so, it 
is good to know that Professor Radhakrishnan and his 
publisher have decided to bring out the section on The 
Philosophy of the Upani?ads as a separate volume and at a 
modest price. 

For what is quintessential in Indian philosophy is its 
spiritual idealism; and the quintessence of its spiritual 
idealism is in the Upanisads. The thinkers of India in all 
ages have turned to the Upanisads as to the fountain head 
of India's speculative thought. " They are the founda- 
tions," says Professor Radhakrishnan, " on which most of 
the later philosophies and religions of India rest. . . . Later 
systems of philosophy display an almost pathetic anxiety to 
accommodate their doctrines to the views of the Upanisads, 
even if they cannot father them all on them. Every re- 
vival of idealism in India has traced its ancestry to the 
teaching of the Upaniads." " There is no important form 
of Hindu thought," says an English exponent of Indian 
philosophy, " heterodox Buddhism included, which is not 
rooted in the Upaniads." x It is to the Upaniads, then, 
that the Western student must turn for illumination, who 
wishes to form a true idea of the general trend of Indian 
thought, but has neither time nor inclination to make a 
Close study of its various systems. And if he is to find the 
clue to the teaching of the Upanisads he cannot do better 
than study it under the guidance of Professor Radhakrishnan. 

It is true that treatises on that philosophy have been 
written by Western scholars. But the Western mind, as 
has been already suggested, is as a rule debarred by the 
prejudices in which it has been cradled from entering with 
sympathetic insight into ideas which belong to another 
world and another age. Not only does it tend to survey 
those ideas, and the problems in which they centre, from 
standpoints which are distinctively Western, but it some- 
' Bloomfield : The Religion of ike Veda. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 8 

times goes so far as to assume that the Western is the only 
standpoint wl^h i^ Can 

we wonder, "then, that when if criticises the speculative 
thought of Ancient India, its adverse judgment is apt to 
resolve itself into fundamental misunderstanding, and even 
its sympathy is sometimes misplaced ? 

In Gough's Philosophy of the Upaniads we have a con- 
temptuously hostile criticism of the ideas which dominate 
that philosophy, based on obstinate misunderstanding of 
the Indian point of view, misunderstanding so complete 
that our author makes nonsense of what he criticises before 
he has begun to study it. In Deussen's work on the same 
subject a work of close thought and profound learning 
which deservedly commands respect we have a singular 
combination of enthusiastic appreciation with complete 
misunderstanding on at least one vital point. Speaking 
of the central conception of the Upanisads, that of the 
ideal identity of God and the soul, Gough says, " this 
empty intellectual conception, void of spirituality, is the 
highest form that the Indian mind is capable of." Com- 
ment on this jugement saugrcnu is needless. Speaking of 
the same conception, Deussen says, " it will be found to 
possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upaniads, 
their time and country; nay, we claim for it an inestimable 
value for the whole race of mankind . . . one thing we 
may assert with confidence whatever new and unwonted 
paths the philosophy of the future may strike out, this 
principle will remain permanently unshaken, and from it 
no deviation can take place." This is high praise. But 
when our author goes on to argue that the universe is 
pure illusion, and claims that this is the fundamental view 
of the Upanisads, he shows, as Professor Radhakrishnan 
has fully demonstrated, that he has not grasped the true 
inwardness of the conception which he honours so highly. 

With these examples of the aberration of Western criti- 
cism before us, we shall perhaps think it desirable to turn 
for instruction and guidance to the exposition of the Upani- 
ads which Professor Radhakrishnan, an Indian thinker, 
scholar and critic, has given us. If we do so, we shall not 
be disappointed. As the inheritor of a great philosophical 



4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

tradition, into which he was born rather than indoctrinated, 
Professor Radhakrishnan has an advantage over the Western 
student of Indian philosophy, which no weight of learning 
and no degree of metaphysical acumen can counterbalance, 
and of which he has made full use. His study of the 
Upaniads if a Western reader may presume to say so 
is worthy of its theme. 

The Upanisads are the highest and purest expression of 
the speculative thought of India. They embody the medita- 
tions on great matters of a succession of seers who lived 
between 1000 and 300 B.C. In them, says Professor J. S. 
Mackenzie, " we have the earliest attempt at a construc- 
tive theory of the cosmos, and certainly one of the most 
interesting and remarkable/ 1 

What do the Upaniads teach us ? Its authors did not 
all think alike ; but, taking their meditations as a whole, 
we may say that they are dominated by one paramount 
conception, that of the ideal oneness of the soul of man with 

* - **"' *' " *iiiiiii>ni.iw-'*.>i .jHmtt^n,*. * **" v *** *<* i,i. Hi mnii ii,Hauij*<>"^iViiii i .. 

fy&iMtoLQJJ^^lWY*!^ The Sanscrit word for the soul of 
man is Atman, for the soul of the universe Brahman. " God's 
dwelling place," says Professor Radhakrishnan in his ex- 
position of the philosophy of the Upaniads, " is the heart 
of man. The inner immortal self and the great cosmic 
power are one and the same. Brahman is die Atman, and 
the Atman is the Brahman. The one supreme power 
through which all things have been brought into being is 
one with the inmost self in each man's heart." What is 
real in each of us is his self or soul. What is real in the 
universe is its self or soul, in virtue of which its All is One, 
and the name for which in our language is God. And the 
individual soul is one, potentially and ideally, with the 
divine or universal soul. In the words of one of the Upani- 
ads : "He who is the Brahman in man and who is that in 
the sun, these are one." 

* The significance of this conception is more than meta- 
physical. There is a practical side to it which its exponents 
are apt to ignore. The unity of the all-pervading life, in 
and through its own essential spirituality the unity of the 
trinity of God and Nature and Man is, from man's point 
of view, an ideal to be realised rather than an accomplished 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 5 

fact. If this is so, if oneness with the real, the universal, 
the divine self, is the ideal end of man's being, it stands to 
reason that self-realisation, the finding of the real self, is the 
highest task which man can set himself. In the Upanisads 
themselves the ethical implications of their central concep- 
tion were not fully worked out. To do so, to elaborate the 
general idea of self-realisation into a comprehensive scheme 
of life, was the work of the great teacher whom we call 
Buddha. 

This statement may seem to savour of paradox. In the 
West the idea is still prevalent that Buddha broke away 
completely from the spiritual idealism of the Upaniads, 
that he denied God, denied the soul, and held out to his 
followers the prospect of annihilation as the final reward 
of a righteous life. This singular misconception, which is 
not entirely confined to the West, is due to Buddha's 
agnostic silence having been mistaken for comprehensive 
denial. It is time that this mistake was corrected. It is 
only by affiliating the ethics of Buddhism to the metaphysics 
of the Upanisads that we can pass behind the silence of 
Buddha and get into touch with the philosophical ideas 
which ruled his mind, ideas which were not the less real or 
effective because he deliberately held them in reserve. This 
has long been my own conviction ; and I am now confirmed 
in it by finding that it is shared by Professor Radhakrishna, 
who sets forth the relation of Buddhism to the philosophy 
of the Upanisads in the following words : " The only meta- 
physics that can justify Buddha's ethical discipline is the 
metaphysics underlying the Upanisads. . . . Buddhism 
helped to democratise the philosophy of the Upaniads, 
which was till then confined to a select few/ The process 
demanded that the deep philosophical truths which cannot 
be made clear fo the masses of men should for practical 
purposes be ignored. It was Buddha's mission to accept 
the idealism of the Upanisads at its best' and make it avail- 
able for the daily needs of mankind. Historical Buddhism 
means the spread of the Upaniad doctrines among the 
people. It thus helped to create a heritage which is living 
to the present day/' 

Given that oneness with his own real self, which is also 



6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANlSADS 

the soul of Nature and the spirit of God, is the ideal end of 
man's being, the question arises : How is that end to be 
achieved ? In India, the land of psychological experiments, 
many ways to it were tried and are still being tried. There 
was the way of Gnani, or intense mental concentration. 
There was the way of Bhakti, or passionate love and de- 
votion. There was the way of Yogi, or severe and 
systematic self-discipline. These ways and the like of these 
might be available for exceptionally gifted persons. They 
were not available, as Buddha saw clearly, for the rank and 
file of mankind. It was for the rank and file of mankind, 
it was for the plain average man, that Buddha devised his 
scheme of conduct. He saw that in one's everyday life, 
among one's fellow men, there were ample opportunities for 
the higher desires to assert themselves as higher, and for the 
lower desires to be placed under due control. There were 
ample opportunities, in other words, for the path of self- 
mastery and self-transcendence, the path of emancipation 
from the false self and of affirmation of the true self, to be 
followed from day to day, from year to year, and even for 
Buddha, like the seers of the Upanisads, took the reality of 
re-birth for granted from life to life. He who walked in 
that path had set his face towards the goal of his own per- 
fection, and, in doing so, had, unknown to himself, accepted 
the philosophy of the Upaniads as the ruling principle of 
his life. 

If this interpretation of the life-work of Buddha is 
correct, if it was his mission to make the dominant idea of 
the Upaniads available for the daily needs of ordinary 
jnen, it is impossible to assign limits to the influence which 
that philosophy has had and is capable of having in human 
affairs in general and in the moral life of man in particular. 
The metaphysics of the Upanisads, when translated into 
the ethics of self-realisation, provided and still provides 
for a spiritual need which has been felt in divers ages and 
which was never more urgent than it is to-day. For it is 
to-day, when supernatural religion is losing its hold on us, 
that the secret desire of the heart for the support and 
guidance which the religion of nature can alone afford, is 
making itself felt as it has never been felt before. And if 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 7 

the religion of nature is permanently to satisfy our deeper 
needs, it must take the form of devotion to the natural end 
of man's being, the end which the seers of the Upaniads 
discerned and set before us, the end of oneness with that 
divine or universal self which is at once the soul of all things 
and the true being of each individual man. In other words, 
it is as the gospel of spiritual evolution that the religion of 
nature must make its appeal to our semi-pagan world. It 
was the gospel of spiritual evolution which Buddha, true 
to the spirit of the Upaniads, preached 2,500 years ago ; x 
and it is for a re-presentation of the same gospel, in the 
spirit of the same philosophy, that the world is waiting <now. 

* It was the gospel of spiritual evolution which Christ preached in 
a later age, to a different audience and through the medium of other 
forms of thought. Such at least is my earnest conviction. Of the 
two pivotal sayings, " I and my Father are one," and " Be ye perfect 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect/' the former falls 
into line with the spiritual idealism of the Upamsads, the latter into 
line with the ethical idealism of Buddha. The notation, as might be I 
expected, is different ; but the idea and the ideal are the same. * 



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 

B.C. . . Bhagavadglta. 

E.R.E. . Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 

J.A.O.S. . Journal of the American Oriental Society. 

J.R.A.S. . Journal of the Royal Asiatip Society. 

P. ... PancastikayasamayasSra. 

R.B. . . Ramanuja's Bhasya on the Vedanta Sfltras. 

SB. . . Samkara's Bhasya on the Vedanta Sutras. 

S.B.E. . . Sacred Books of the East. 

Up. . . . Upanisads. 

V.S. . . Vedanta Sutras. 



REFERENCES 

MAX MILLER : The Upanisads (S.B.E. Vols. I. and XV.). 

DEUSSBN : The Philosophy of the Upanisads. 

GOUGH : The Philosophy of the Upanisads. 

BARUA : Pre- Buddhistic Philosophy. 

MAHADEVA SASTRI : The TaittLrtya Upanisad. 

RANADE : The Psychology of the Upanisads (Indian Philosophical 

Review), 1918-1919 
HUMS : The Thirteen Principal Upanisads. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
UPANISADS 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
UPANISADS 



Introduction The fluid and indefinite character of the teaching of 
the Upanisads Western students of the Upanisads Date Early 
Upamsads The great thinkers of the age -The hymns of the $g- 
Veda and the doctrine of the Upanisads compared Emphasis on 
the monistic side of the hymns The shifting of the centre from the 
object to the subject The pessimism of the Upanisads The pessi- 
mistic implications of the conception of saxhs&ra Protest against 
the externalism of the Vedic religion Subordination of the Vedic 
knowledge The central problems of the Upanisads Ultimate 
reality The nature of Atman distinguished from body, dream con- 
sciousness and empirical self- The different modes of consciousness, 
waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and ecstasy The influence of 
the Upamsad analysis of self on subsequent thought The approach 
to reality from the object side Matter, life, consciousness, in- 
telligence and Snanda Samkara and R&m&nuja on the status of 
ananda Brahman and Atman Tat tvam asi The positive char- 
acter of Brahman Intellect and intuition Brahman and the world 
Creation The doctrine of m&y Deussen's view examined 
Degrees of reality Are the Upanisads pantheistic ? The finite 
self The ethics of the Upanisads The nature of the idealThe 
metaphysical warrant for an ethical theory Moral life Its general 
features Asceticism Intellectualism Jf&na, Karma and Up&sana 
Morality and religion Beyond good and evil The religion of the 
Upanigads Different forms The highest state of freedom The 
ambiguous accounts of it in the Upanisads Evil Suffering- 
Karma Its value The problem of freedom Future life and immor- 
tality Psychology of the Upanisads Non-Vedantic tendencies in 
the Upanisads Simkhya Yoga Nyaya General estimate of the 
thought of the Upanisads Transition to the epic period. 

I 



THE UPANISADS 

THE Upanisads * form the concluding portions of the 
Veda, and are therefore called the Veda-anta, or the end 

* The word Upanisad comes from upa, near, sad, to sit. It means 
"sitting near" the teacher to receive instruction. It gradually came to 

is 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI^ADS 

of the Veda, a denomination which suggests that they 
contain the essence of the Vedic teaching. They are the 
foundations on which most of the later philosophies and 
religions of India rest. "There is no important form of 
Hindu thought, heterodox Buddhism included, which is 
not rooted in the Upaniads." x Later systems of philo- 
sophy display an almost pathetic anxiety to accommodate 
their doctrines to the views of the Upaniads, even if 
they cannot father them all on them. Every revival of 
idealism in India has traced its ancestry to the teaching 
of the Upaniads. Their poetry and lofty idealism have 
not as yet lost their power to move the minds and sway 
the hearts of men. They contain the earliest records of 
Indian speculation. The hymns and the liturgical books 
of the Veda are concerned more with the religion and prac- 
tice than with the thought of the Aryans. We find in the 
Upani?ads an advance on the Samhita mythology, Brahmana 
hair-splitting, and even Aranyaka theology, though all these 
stages are to be met with. The authors of the Upaniads 
transform the past they handle, and the changes they effect 
in the Vedic religion indicate the boldness of the heart that 
beats only for freedom. The aim of the Upaniads is 
not so much to reach philosophical truth as to bring peace 
and freedom to the anxious human spirit. Tentative solu- 
tions of metaphysical questions are put forth in the form 
of dialogues and disputations, though the Upaniads are 
essentially the outpourings or poetic deliverances of philo- 
sophically tempered minds in the face of the facts of life. 
They express the restlessness and striving of the human 
mind to grasp the true nature of reality. Not being sys- 
tematic philosophy, or the production of a single author, 
or even of the same age, they contain much that is incon- 

toean what we receive from the teacher, a sort of secret doctrine or rakatytm. 
Sometimes it is made to mean what enables us to destroy error, and approach 
truth. $aihkara, in his introduction to the Taittirfya Upanisad, says: 
" Knowledge of Brahman is called Upanisad because in the case of those 
who devote themselves to it, the bonds of conception, birth, decay, etc., 
become unloostd, or because it destroy* them altogether, or because it leads 
the pupil very near to Brahman, or because therein the highest God is 
seated/' See Pandit, March, 1872, p. 254. 

Bloomfield : Tk* Rtligion of U* Veda. p. 51. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 15 

sistent and unscientific; but if that were all, we cannot 
justify the study of the Upaniads. They set forth funda- 
mental conceptions which are sound and satisfactory, and 
these constitute the means by which their own innocent 
errors, which through exclusive emphasis have been exag- 
gerated into fallacious philosophies, can be corrected* Not- 
withstanding the variety of authorship add the period of 
time covered by the composition of these half-poetical and 
half-philosophical treatises, there is a unity of purpose, 
a vivid sense of spiritual reality in them all, which become 
clear and distinct as we descend the stream of time. 
They reveal to us the wealth of the reflective religious mind 
of the times. In the domain of intuitive philosophy their 
achievement is a 'considerable one. Nothing that went 
before them for compass and power, for suggestiveness 
and satisfaction, can stand comparison with them. Their 
philosophy and religion have satisfied some of the greatest 
thinkers and intensely spiritual souls. We do not agree 
with Cough's estimate that " there is little that is spiritual 
in all this/' or that " this empty intellectual conception, 
void of spirituality, is the highest form that the Indian 
mind is capable of." Professor J. S. Mackenzie, with truer 
insight, says that " the earliest attempt at a constructive 
theory of the cosmos, and certainly one of the most inter- 
esting and remarkable, is that which is set forth in the 
Upaniads." x 

II 

THE TEACHING OF THE UPANISADS 

It is not easy to decide what the Upaniads teach. 
Modern students of the Upaniads read them in the light 
of this or that preconceived theory. Men are so little 
accustomed to trust their own judgment that they take 
refuge in authority and tradition. Though these are safe 
enough guides for conduct and life, truth requires insight 
and judgment as well. A large mass of opinion inclines 
to-day to the view of Saxhkara, who in his commentaries 

* B.R.E., vol. viii., p. 597; iee also Hume, Tk$ TKrU** 
Up**ifads, p. g. 



16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

on the Upaniads, the Bhagavadgita and the Ved&nta 
Sfltras, has elaborated a highly subtle system of non-dualistic 
metaphysics. Another is equally vehement that Samkara 
has not said the last word on the subject, and that a philo- 
sophy of love and devotion is the logical outcome oi the 
teaching of the Upani$ads. Different commentators, start- 
ing with particular beliefs, force their views into the Upani- 
ads and strain their language so as to make it consistent 
with their own special doctrines. When - disputes arise, 
all schools turn to the Upaniads. Thanks to the obscurity 
as well as the richness, the mystic haze as well as the sug- 
gestive quality of the Upaniads, the interpreters have been 
able to use them in the interests of their own religion and 
philosophy. The upaniads had no set theory of philosophy 
or dogmatic scheme of theology to propound. They hint 
at the truth in life, but not as yet in science or philosophy. 
So numerous are their suggestions of truth, so various are 
their guesses at God, that almost anybody may seek in 
them what he wants and find what he seeks, and every 
school of dogmatics may congratulate itself on finding its 
own doctrine in the sayings of the Upaniads. In the 
history of thought it has often happened that a philosophy 
has been victimised by a traditional interpretation that 
became established at an early date, and has thereafter 
prevented critics and commentators from placing it in its 
proper perspective. The system of the Upaniads has 
not escaped this fate. The Western interpreters have followed 
this or that commentator. Gough follows Samkara's inter- 
pretation. In his Preface to the Philosophy of the Upani?ad$ 
he writes : " The greatest expositor of the philosophy of 
the Upani$ads is axhkara or Samkaracarya. The teaching 
of Samkara himself is the natural and the legitimate inter- 
pretation of the philosophy of the Upanigads." Max 
Miiller adopts the same standpoint. " We must remember 
that the orthodox view of the Vedinta is not what we 
should call evolution, but illusion. Evolution of the Brahman 
or parinima is heterodox, illusion or vivarta is orthodox 
Vedinta. ... To put it metaphorically, the world according 
to the orthodox Ved&ntin does not proceed from Brahman 

*P. viii 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 17 

as a tree from a germ, but as a mirage from the rays of 
the sun." f Deussen accepts the same view. We shall try 
to ascertain the meaning which the authors of the Upaniads 
intended, and not what later commentators attributed to 
them* The latter give us an approximately close idea of 
how the Upaniads were interpreted in later times, but 
not necessarily a true insight into the philosophic synthesis 
which the ancient seekers had. But the problem is, do 
the thoughts of the Upaniads hang together ? Could 
all of them be traced to certain commonly acknowledged 
principles about the general make-up of the world ? We 
are not so bold as to answer this question in the affirmative. 
These writings contain too many hidden ideas, too many t 
possible meanings, too rich a mine of fancies and conjectures, 
that we can easily understand how different systems can 
draw their inspiration from the same source. The Upaniads 
do not contain any philosophic synthesis as such, of the 
type of the system of Aristotle or of Kant or of Samkara. 
They have the consistency of intuition rather than of logic, 
and there are certain fundamental ideas which, so to say, 
form the first sketch of a philosophic system. Out of these 
ideas a coherent and consistent doctrine might be developed* 
It is, however, difficult to be confident that one's working 
up of elements which knew neither method nor arrangement 
is the correct one, on account of the obscurity of many 
passages. Yet with the higher ideals of philosophic expo- 
sition in view, we shall consider the Upaniad ideas of 
the universe and of man's place in it. 

Ill 

NUMBER AND DATE OF THE UPANISADS 
The Upaniads are generally accounted to be 108 in 
number, of which about ten are the chief, on which Samkara 
has commented. These are the oldest and the most authori- 
tative. We cannot assign any exact date to them. The 
earliest of them are certainly pre-Buddhistic, a few of them are 
after Buddha. It is likely that they were composed between 
the completion of the Vedic hymns and the rise of Buddhism 
(that is the sixth century 8.9.) The accepted dates 

1 S.B.E., vol. xv., p. xxvii. 

9 



18 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

for the early Upaniads are 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C. Some 
of the later Upaniads on which Saifakara has commented 
are post-Buddhistic, and belong to about 400 or 300 B.C. 
The oldest Upaniads are those in prose. These are non- 
sectarian. The Aitareya, the Kau!taki, the Taittiriya, 
the Cha,ndogya, the Brhadaranyaka, and parts of the Kena 

t are the early ones, while verses 1-13 of the Kena, an$Tv. 
8-21 of the Brhadaranyaka form the transition to the 
metrical Upaniads, and may be put down as later additions. 
The Kathopani^ad is later still. We find in it elements 
of the Samkhya and the Yoga systems. 2 It also quotes 
freely from the other Upanisads and the Bhagavadgit.* 

\The Manqlukya is the latest of the pre-sectarian Upanisads. 
The Atharva-Veda Upaniads are also of later growth. 
Maitrayam upaniad has elements in it of both the S&mkhya 
and the Yoga systems. The vetavatara was composed 
at the period when the several philosophical theories were 
fermenting. It shows in many passages an acquaintance 
with the technical terms of the orthodox systems and mentions 
many of their prominent doctrines. It seems to be interested 
in presenting a theistic syncretism of the VedSnta, the 
Sariikhya and the Yoga. The Brahma Sfltras do not refer 
to it. There is more of pure speculation present ifi the 
early prose Upaniads, while in the later ones there is 
more of religious worship and devotion.3 In presenting 

' See ii. 18-19 ; " 6. 10 and n. 

See i. 2. 5 ; and Mmtfaka, ii. 8 ; i 2-7, and GIt&, ii. 29 ; ii. 18-19, *d 
ii. 19-20 and ii. 23, and Muitfaka, iii, 2-3, GltS, i. 53. Some scholars are 
inclined to the view that the Katha upani$ad is older than the Mungaka and 
the GltS. 

3 Denssen arranges the Upanisads in the following order : 

1. Ancient prose Upani$ads : Brhadaranyaka, Chindogya, Tait- 

tiriya, Aitareya, Kao$Itaki, Kena (partly in prose). 

2. Verse Upani$ads ; 1^1, Katha, Muitfaka and Svetaivatam. 

3. Later prose : Pra^na and Maitrayanl. t 

All these, excepting the Maitr&yanl, are called the classical Upani$ad. 

About the Maitrlyanl, Professor MacdoneU writes : " Its many quota- 
tions from the other Upanisads, the occurrence of several later words, the 
developed S&mkhya doctrine presupposed by it, distinct references to the 
anti-Vedic heretical schools, all combine to render the late character of this 
work undoubted. It is, in fact, a summing up of the old upanisadic doc* 
trines with an admixture of ideas derived from the S&rhkhya system and 
from Buddhism" (Sanskrit Liter*****, p. 230). 

Nrnfahottaratipanlya is one of the twelve Upanisads explained by 
Vidyiranya in his "Sarvopani^adarthfinubhfltiprakWa." 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 19 

the philosophy of the Upaniads, we shall take our stand 
mainly on the pre-Buddhistic ones, and strengthen our 
views as derived from them by those of the post-Buddhistic 
ones. The main Upaniads for our purposes are the< 
ChSLndogya and the B^hadaranyaka, the Taittiriya and i 
the Aitareya, the K^uitald and the Kena ; the l and J 
the Mi^i(Jukya come next 

IV 

THE THINKERS OF THE UPANISADS 

Unfortunately, we know very little of the lives of the 
great thinkers whose reflections are embodied in the Upani- 
ads. So careless were they of personal fame and so 
anxious for the spread of truth, that they fathered their 
views on the honoured deities and heroes of the Vedic 
period. Prajapati and Indra, NSrada and Sanatkumara 
figure as dialecticians. When the history of the great 
thinkers of the Upaniad period with their distinctive 
contributions comes to be written, the following names, 
if we leave aside the mythical ones, will stand out : MahidSsa 
Aitareya, Raikva, Sarujilya, Satyakama Jabila, Jaivali, 
Uddalaka, Svetaketu, Bharadvaja, Gargyayana, Pratar- 
dana, Balaki, AjStaSatru, Varuna, Yajnavalkya, Gargi and 
Maitreyi. 1 



THE HYMNS OF THE RG-VEDA AND THE UPANISADS 

In view of the distinctive character of their contents, 
the Upaniads are regarded as a class of literature inde- 
pendent of the Vedic hymns and the Brahmanas. The 
simple faith in gods of the hymns was, as we saw, displaced 
by the mechanical sacerdotalism of the Brahmanas. The 
Upani$ads feel that the faith that ends in a church is not' 
enough. They attempt to moralise the religion of the 

* The interested reader will find a lucid account of these thinkers and 
their views in the excellent work of my friend and colleague, D 
Pr*-B*ddhtshc Indian Philosophy. 




80 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

Vedas without disturbing its form. The advance of the 
Upaniads on the Vedas consists in an increased emphasis 
on the monistic suggestions of the Vedic hymns, a shifting 
of the centre from the outer to the inner world, a protest 
[against* the externalisxn of the Vedic practices and an in* 

ierence to the sacredness of the Veda. 

Amid all the confused ferment of Vedic devotions a 
principle of unity and comprehension was asserting 
itself. In some hymns the conception of a single central 
power was actually formulated. The Upaniads carry out 
this tendency. They recognise only one spirit almighty, 
infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent, the creator, 
preserver and destroyer of the world. He is the light, 
lord and life of the universe, one without a second, and 
the sole object of worship and adoration. The half-gods 
of the Veda die and the true God arrives. " How many 
gods are there really, O Yajfiavalkya ? " " One/' he said. 1 
" Now answer us a further question : Agni, Vayu, Aditya, 
K5la (time), which is breath (Prana), Anna (food), Brahm, 
Rudra, Vinu. Thus do some meditate on him, some on 
another. Say which of these is the best for us ? " And 
he said to them : " These are but the chief manifestations 
of the highest, the immortal, the incorporeal Brahman. . . . 
Brahman, indeed, is all this, and a man may meditate on, 
worship or discard also those which are its manifestations." 
The visible infinite (objective) and the invisible infinite 
(subjective) are taken up into the spiritual whole. 

The polytheistic conceptions were too deeply rooted in 
the Indian consciousness to be easily overthrown. The 
many gods were subordinated to the One. Without Brah- 
man, Agni cannot burn a blade of grass, Viyu cannot blow 
a whisp of straw. " For fear of him, fire burns, for fear 
of him the sun shines, and for fear of him the winds, the 
clouds and death perform their office." 3 Sometimes the 
many gods are made parts of one whole. The five house- 
holders led by Uddalaka approach king A&vapati, who 

Bfh. Up., ix. X. 

Maitrftyaof Upanfcad, iv. 5-*; "* *> Murfaka, i. i. i ; Taittirlya, 
i. 5 ; Brh., i. 4. 6 ; see alto i. 4. 7 ; i. 4. 10. 
i Tait. Up. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 21 

asked each of them, Whom do you meditate on as the 
Self ? The first answered heaven ; the second, the sun ; 
the third, air; the fourth, ether; the fifth, water; and 
the king replies that each of them worshipped only a part 
of the truth. Heaven is the head, the sun the eye, the 
air the breath, the ether the trunk, the water the bladder, 
and the earth the feet of the central reality, which is pictured 
as the world-soul. Compromise between the philosophic 
faith of the few and the fancied superstition of the crowds 
is the only possible reconciliation ; we cannot abolish the 
old forms, for that would be to ignore the fundamental 
nature of humanity, as well as the patent differences, in 
the moral and intellectual states of believers who were not 
capable of acquiring at once the highest wisdom. Another 
factor also determined the attitude of the Upanisads. Their 
aim was not science or philosophy, but right living. They 
wished to liberate the spirit from the trammels of the flesh, 
that it might enjoy communion with God. Intellectual 
discipline was subsidiary to holiness of life. Besides, there 
was the feeling of reverence for the past. The Vedic seers 
were the ancients of blessed memory, whose doctrines it 
was impious to attack. In this way the Upaniads sought 
to square a growing idealistic philosophy with the dogmas 
of a settled theology. 

The sources of man's spiritual insight are two-fold : 
objective and subjective the wonders of the world without 
and the stress of the human soul. In the Vedas the vast 
order and movement of nature engages attention. Their gods 
represent cosmic forces. In the Upaniads we return to 
explore the depths of the inner world. " The self -existent 
pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn outwards ; 
therefore man looks outward, not inward into himself ; 
some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing 
for immortality, saw the self behind." * From the outward 
physical fact, attention shifts to the inner immortal self 
situated at the back of the mind, as it were. We need 
not look to the sky for the bright light ; the glorious fire 
is within the soul. The soul of man is the keyhole 
to the landscape of the whole universe, the Aka within 

* Katha Up,, iv, i. 



22 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 

the heart, the limpid lake which mirrors the truth. The 
altered outlook brought about a consequential change. 
Not the so-called gods, but the true living God, the Atman 
has to be worshipped. God's dwelling-place is the heart 
of man. " Brahmsqiafc koSo'si," * Thou art the sheath of 
Brahman. " Whosoever worships another deity, in such a 
manner as he is another, another * I am/ does not know/' * 
The inner immortal self and the great cosmic power are 
one and the same. Brahman is the Atman and the Atman 
is the Brahman. The one supreme power through which 
all things have been brought into being is one with the 
inmost self in each man's heart. 3 The Upaniads do not 
uphold the theory of grace in the same spirit as the Vedas 
do. We do not have appeals to the Vedic gods, who were 
the sources of material prosperity for increase of happiness, 
but only prayers for deliverance from sorrow. 

The emphasis on sorrow is sometimes interpreted as 
indicating an extravagant pessimism on the part of the 
Indian ris. It is not so. The religion of the Vedas 
certainly was more joyous, but it was a lower form of religion, 
where thought never penetrated beneath the husk of things. 
It was a religion expressing the delight of man at being 
in a world full of pleasures. The gods were feared and also 
trusted. Life on earth was simple and sweet innocence. 
The spiritual longing of the soul rebukes light-hearted 
joyousness and provokes reflection on the purpose of man's 
existence. Discontent with the actual is the necessary 
precondition of every moral change and spiritual rebirth. 
The pessimism of the Upaniads is the condition of all 
philosophy. Discontent prevails to enable man to effect 

Tait. Up. Brh. Up., i. 4, 10. 

3 See Chindogya, iii 14. Of Augustine : " I asked the earth for God, 
and it answered me, ' I am not He ' ; I asked the sea and the depths and 
the creeping things, and they answered, ' We are not the God, seek thon 
above us.' I asked the breezy gales, and the airy universe, and all its 
denizens replied, ' Anaximenes is mistaken, I am not God ' ; I asked the 
heaven, sun, moon, stars, ' Neither are we,' say they, ' the God whom thou 
seekest ' ; and I asked unto all things which stand about the gateways of 
any flesh (the senses), ' Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He ; tell 
me something of Him/ and they cried with a loud voice, ' Ha made us/ " 
The search goes on until the inward self is questioned, when the answer is : 
" Thy God is unto thee, even the life of thy life " (Confusions, x. chap. 6), 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 28 

an escape from it. If there is no way of escape, if no deliver- 
ance is sought after, then dissatisfaction is mischievous. 
The pessimism of the Upaniads has not developed to 
such an extent as to suppress all endeavour and generate 
inertia. There was enough faith in life to support all 
genuine search for truth. In the words of Earth : " The 
Upaniads are much more instinct with the spirit of specu- 
lative daring than the sense of suffering and weariness." r 
" Within the limits of the Upaniads there are indeed 
few explicit references to the misery of the life caught in 
the ceaseless cycle of death and birth. And its authors 
are saved from pessimism by the joy they feel at the message 
of redemption they proclaim." * The formulation of the 
theory of samsara or rebirth is no proof that the Upaniads 
are pessimistic. Life on earth is the means of self-perfectiont| 
We have to undergo the discipline of samsara in our efforts 
towards the higher joy and the complete possession of 
spiritual truth. That which gives zest to life is the supreme 
motive of the joy of self-conquest. Samsara is only al 
succession of spiritual opportunities. Life is a stage in 
spiritual perfection, a step in the passage to the infinite. 
It is the time for preparing the soul for eternity. Life is 
no empty dream and the world no delirium of spirit. In 
the later versions of rebirth in Indian thought we miss 
this ennobling ideal, and birth becomes the result of an 
error of the soul and samsara a dragging chain. 

At the stage of life represented by the Brahmajias, the 
simple religion of the Vedic hymns was one of sacrifices. 
Men's relations with the gods were mechanical, a question 
of give and take, profit and loss. The revival of spirituality 
was the need of the age immersed in formalism. In the 
Upaniads we find a return to the fresh springs of 
spiritual life. They declare that the soul will not obtain 
salvation by the performance of sacrifices. It can be ob- 
tained only by the truly religious life, based on an insight into 
the heart of the universe. Perfection is inward and spiritual, 
not outward and mechanical. We cannot make a man 
dean by washing his shirt. A consciousness of the identity 

1 Religions of India, p. 84. 

* Cave: Redemption. Hindu and Christian, p. 64. 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

of one's own soul with the great All-soul is the essence of 
a truly spiritual life. The uselessness of ritual, the futility 
of sacrifices as means to salvation are brought out. God 
is to be honoured by spiritual worship and not external 
Ceremony. We cannot save ourselves by praising God. 
We cannot impress Him by sacrifices. The authors 
of the Upaniads had a sufficient sense of the historic 
to know that their protest would become ineffective 
if it should demand a revolution in things. They 
; therefore ask only for a change in the spirit. They 
* reinterpret sacrifices and allegorise them. In some passages l 
v we are asked to meditate on the horse-sacrifice.* This 
meditative effort helps us to realise the meaning of the 
sacrifice, and it is said to be quite as valuable as making 
a sacrifice. By giving detailed descriptions of the kind of 
plank, the nature of the wood, etc., they show that they 
are not indifferent to the sacrificial religion. While adhering 
i to the forms they try to refine them. They say that all 
! sacrifices axe for the sake of realising the self of man. Life 
% itself is a sacrifice. " The true sacrifice is man ; his first 
Uwenty-four years are his morning libation ... in hunger, 
in thirst, in abstinence from pleasure standeth his conse- 
cration. ... In his eating and drinking and in his pleasures 
he keeps a holy festival, and in his laughter and feasting 
and marrying he sings hymns of praise. Self-discipline, 
generosity, straightforwardness, ahirhsa,3 and truth in 
speech, these are his payments, and the bath of purification 
when the sacrifice is over is death." 4 We are told how 
the divine nature every day sacrifices itself ; by its sacrifice 
do we live. Sacrifice is made to mean not feasting but 
Denunciation. Make every action, every feeling and every 
thought an offering to God. Let your life be one sacrament 
or yajfia. Sometimes we are told that the sacrifices are 

* Brh, Up., i. i, z. * Agvamedha. I Innocence* 

Chin. Up., iii Ci. Isaiah Iviii. 6-7 : " Is not this the fast that I have 
chosen ? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, 
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not 
to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that ate cast 
out to thy house ? When thon seest the naked, that thou cover him, and 
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ? " See Plato: Euthyph***, 
14. ; Ltwt, 906, D. Jowett'i Edition. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 2$ 

xy as preparations for the higher path. Nobody can 



tread the higher road without fulfilling the requirements of 
the lower. Sacrifices are necessary for the unenlightened, 
though they alone will not do. They give us admission 
to the world of the fathers, which after a temporary sojourn 
in the moon leads back to a new earthly existence. Cere- 
monialism is contrasted with spiritual worship. 1 There 
are occasions when the sacrificial and priestly religion 
strikes them as superficial, and then they give vent to all 
their irony. They describe a procession of dogs to march 
like a procession of the priests, each holding the tail of the 
other in front and saying, " Om ! Let us eat. Om, let us 
drink . . . etc." * Thus the rigid ritual of the Brahmanas, 
which gave little comfort to the weak heart of man, was 
held in check in the Upaniads. 

The attitude of the Upaniads is not favourable to 
the sacredness of the Vedas. Like the rationalistic thinkers 
of a later day, they adopt a double attitude towards Vedic 
authority. They consider the Veda to be of supernatural 
origin, as when they say, " Just as when a fire is laid 
with damp wood, clouds of smoke spread all around, so in 
truth from this great being, has been breathed forth the 
IJg-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, the hymns of the 
Atharvas and the Arigirasas, the narratives, the histories, 
the sciences, the mystical problems, the poems, the proverbs, 
and the expositions all these have been breathed forth 
from Him." 3 It is also recognised that the Vedic know- 
ledge is much inferior to the true divine insight/ and will 
not liberate us. NSrada said : "I know the Rg-Veda, Sir, 
the Yajur, the S5ma-Veda, with all these I know only the 
Mantras and the sacred books, I do not know the Self." 5 
The Muncjaka Upaniad says: "Two kinds of knowledge 
must be known, the higher and the lower. The lower 
knowledge is that which the Rg, Sama, Atharva Veda, 
Ceremonial, Grammar give . . . but the higher knowledge is 
that by which the indestructible Brahman is apprehended." * 

* See also Chin. -Up., i. I, xo. * Ibid., i. 12, 4. 5. 

1 Brh. Up., ii. 4. xo. 

4 See Chftndogya, v. 3. 10. Brh., 3. 5. x ; iv. 4. 21 ; vi. a. i. Kau^Itaki, i. ; 
Tait, ii. 4; Katha, i*. 23. 

$ Chin. Up., vtt. 2. * Muptfaka, L s. 4. 5. 



2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 

VI 

THE PROBLEMS DISCUSSED IN THE UPANISADS 

The central theme of the Upaniads is the problem 
of philosophy. It is the search for what is true. Dis- 
satisfaction with things and second causes suggests the 
questions, which we read at the beginning of the vet&&- 
vatara: "Whence are we born, where do we live, and 
whither do we go ? O, ye who know Brahman, tell us 
at whose command we abide here whether in pain or in 
pleasure. Should time or nature, or necessity or chance, 
or the elements be considered to be the cause, or he who 
is called Purua, the man that is the Supreme spirit ? " 
In the Kena Upaniad the pupil asks, " At whose wish 
does the mind sent forth proceed on its errand ? At whose 
command does the first breath go forth, at whose wish do 
we utter this speech ? What god . directs the eye or the 
ear ? " * The thinkers did not take experience to be an 
inexplicable datum, as common sense does. They wondered 
whether the report of the senses could be taken as final. 
Are the mental faculties by which we acquire experience 
self-existent, or are they themselves effects of something 
mightier still, which lies behind them ? How can we 
consider physical objects, effects and products as they 
are, to be quite as real as their causes ? There must 
be something ultimate at the back of it all, a self- 
existent, in which alone the mind can rest. Knowledge, 
mind, the senses and their objects are all finite and con- 
ditioned. In the field of morals we find that we cannot 
get true happiness from the finite. The pleasures of the 
world are transient, being cut off by old age and death. 
Only thfe infinite gives durable happiness. In religion we 
cry for eternal life. All these force upon us the conviction 
of a timeless being, a spiritual reality, the object of philo- 
sophical quest, the fulfilment of our desires, and the goal 
of religion. The seers of the Upaniads try to lead us to 
this central reality which is infinite existence (sat), absolute 
truth (cit), and pure delight (Snanda). The prayer of 

i. i. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 27 

every human heart is " Lead me from the unreal to the 
real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death 
to immortality." x 

We shall deal with the philosophy of the Upaniads 
under the two heads of metaphysics and ethics. We shall 
present their views of ultimate reality, the nature of the 
world, and the problem of creation under metaphysics, 
and their analysis of the individual, his destiny, his ideal, 
the relation of karma to freedom, the highest conception 
of mukti or release, and the doctrine of rebirth under ethics. 



VII 

THE NATURE OF REALITY 

In solving the question of the nature of ultimate reality, 
the Upaniad thinkers seek to supplement the objective 
vision of the Vedic seers by a subjective one. The highest 
conception reached in the Vedic hymns was that of the one 
reality (Ekam Sat), which realises itself in all the variety 
of existence. This conclusion is strengthened in the 
Upaniads, where the problem is sometimes approached by 
way of a philosophical analysis of the nature of the self 
which they call the Atman. The etymology of this word 
is obscure. In the Kg-veSa x. 16. 3 it means breath or 
the vital essence. Gradually it acquired TSi^Eoeaniiag' of 
soul or^seir^TTKe theory of the true self or Atman is not 
set out with any clearness or fullness of detail, nor are 
isolated statements connected into a coherent system. In 
a dialogue between the teacher Prajapati and the pupil 
Indra, narrated in the Chandogya Upaniad,* we find a 
progressive development in the definition of self through 
the four stages of (i) the bodily self, (2) the empirical self, 
(3) the transcendental self, and (4) the absolute self. The 
question discussed is not so much psychological as meta- 
physical. What is the nature of the self of man, his central 
being? Prajapati opens the discussion by giving certain 

* Asato m sad gamaya, tamaso mft jyotir gamaya, mrtyor mft amrtaifa- 
gamaya. Bfh. Up., i. 3. 27. 

* viii. 3-12. 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

general characteristics which the true sell should possess. 
"The self which is free from sin, free from old age, from 
death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires 
nothing but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing 
but what it ought to imagine, that it is which we must try 
to understand." z It is the subject which persists through- 
out the changes, the common factor in the states of waking, 
dream, sleep, death, rebirth and final deliverance.* It is 
the simple truth that nothing can destroy. Death does 
not touch it nor vice dissolve it. Permanence, continuity, 
unity, eternal activity are its characteristics. It is a world 
self-complete. There is nothing outside of it to set against 
it. Modern criticism will object to the whole procedure as 
a case of petitio principti. By the characteristics of self- 
containedness and self-completeness being assumed, the 
solution is taken for granted. But as we shall see, this 
line of procedure has its own meaning. Prajapati makes 
it clear that the self of man consists in the truly subjective, 
which can never become an object. It is the person that 
sees, not the object seen.s It is not the bundle of qualities 
called the " me," but the I which remains beyond and behind 
inspecting all these qualities. It is the subject in the truest 
sense, and it can never become the object. Much of the con- 
tent of the self as ordinarily used can become an object. The 
argument assumes that whatever becomes an object belongs 
to the not-self. We must strip away everything of our 
actual self alien to or different from the self. The first 
answer given is that the body which is born, grows up and 
decays and dies, is the true self. The self, according to 
Prajipati, is indeed he who is seen when you look into 
another's eye or a pail of water or a mirror. It is suggested 
that we observe a picture even to the very hairs and nails. 
To indicate that it is not the self, Prajapati asks Indra 
to adorn himself, put on the best clothes and look again 
into the water and the mirror, and he sees his likeness 
frell adorned with best clothes and clean. A doubt occurs 
to Indra. " As this self in the shadow or the water is well 
adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed 
when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body 

viii. 7. i. See Brh. Up*, iv. 4, 3. J vitt. 7. 3. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANKA0S 29 

is well cleaned, that self will also be blind if the body 
is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is 
crippled, and perish, in fact, as soon as the body perishes. 
I see no good in this/' z India approaches his teacher 
Praj&pati, and after another long interval is told that 
" he who moves about happy in dreams is the self." The 
true self is not the body which is exposed to all suffering 
and imperfections, which is a material phenomenon. The 
body is only an instrument used by consciousness, while 
consciousness is not the product of the body. And now 
Indra is told that the dreaming subject is the self, but he 
feels another difficulty. " Though it is true that that self 
is not rendered faulty by faults of body, nor struck when 
it is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they 
struck him in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes 
even conscious as it were of pain and sheds tears, therefore 
I see no good in this." a Prajapati took the dream states 
instead of other mental experiences, because dreams being 
more independent of body are crucial in their nature. The 
self is supposed to roam untrammelled in dreams. In 
them the mind is said to float free of the accidents of body. 
This view equates the self with the ever-growing and changing 
mental experiences. This is the empirical self, and Indra 
rightly recognises that this empirical self is subject to the 
accidents of experience. It cannot be the subject, for every 
moment it is changing. Though it is independent of body, 
dream states do not seem to be self-existent, which the 
true self or Atman must be. The ego dependent on the 
limitations of time and birth cannot be said to be eternal. 
The self tethered to a local and temporal environment is 
a creature of time. It is the wanderer in the world of 
samsira. It constructs for itself an imperfect world out 
of imperfect data. It is not indestructible, nor has it 
boundless freedom. We seem to require a subject as the 
ground and sustainer of all experience, a vaster reality of 
which the dream states as well as waking experience are 
only imperfect revelations. A mere flux of states cannot 
be sustained by itself. The empirical self is not eternal 
in ltd own right. Indra again approaches Praj&pati, explains 

* vitt. 9* I* viU. so, a. 3. 



80 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

to him his position, and after a long time is taught. " When 
a man being asleep, reposing and at perfect rest, sees no 
dreams, that is the self/ 9 * Praj&pati understands Indra's 
difficulty. The self could not be reduced to a series of 
states, for that would be to explain away the reality of a 
permanent ego, and make Atman subject to the vicissitudes 
of our chance experiences. Indra has to be taught that 
the objects of experience require a permanent subject by 
which they could be experienced. Prajapati intended to 
bring out how, while a grin required a cat, everywhere 
except in Alice's wonderland, a cat need not always have 
a grin. The object depends upon the subject, but not the 
subject on the object in the same sense. Without the self 
there can be no knowledge, no art, no morality. Objects 
out of relation to a self are non-existent. From the subject 
are all objects and the subject itself is not a thing among 
other things. To enable Indra to realise that the self is 
the subject of all experiences, Prajapati employs the method 
of abstraction which has its own disadvantages. Our life 
is ordinarily busy with things. The world is too much 
with us. Our self is lost in feelings, desires and imaginations, 
and does not know what it really is. Leading the life of 
mere objectivity, absorbed in the things of nature, ever 
busy with the active pursuits of the world, we do not want 
to waste a moment's thought on the first principle of all 
things the self of man. Knowledge is taken for granted. 
To reflect on it, to understand its implications, means mental 
strain. In the history of European thought the question 
of the possibility of knowledge is a late one, but when it 
was put, it was realised that knowledge was impossible 
without what Kant called the transcendental unity of 
apperception, what Plotinus referred to as the " accom- 
paniment " by the soul of its own mental activities. The 
most elementary presentation requires the reality of self. 
In the most apparently passive perceptions we realise the 
activity of the self. All changes, all experiences, assume 
a central self. The changes themselves are recog- 
nised as changes within a whole, which we are trying to 
actualise. Praj&pati wishes to bring out the necessity 

' viii. ii. I. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANKADS 81 

of this self by urging that the self continuously exists, 
even when the waking or the dreaming experience is sus- 
pended. In sleep, deep and dreamless, we have no felt 
objects of experience, but we cannot on that account say 
there is no self. Prajapati assumes that India will admit 
the reality of a self in sleep, for the continuity of conscious* 
ness, despite the temporal gaps, cannot otherwise be accounted 
for. Devadatta, after good sleep, continues to be Devadatta, 
since his experiences unite themselves to the system which 
existed at the time when he went to sleep. They link 
themselves to his thoughts and do not fly to any other's. 
This continuity of experience requires us to admit a perma- 
nent self underlying all contents of consciousness. That 
which exists in sleep without any objects to contemplate 
is the self. The mirror is not shattered simply because 
nothing is seen in it. Prajapati tries to bring out the 
absolute supremacy of the subject over the object, the 
truth jof Yajfiavalkya's statement that even when all objects 
are extinguished, the subject persists in its own light. 
" When the sun has set, when the moon has set, and when the 
fire is put out, the self alone is his light." l But Indra was 
too much of a psychologist for Prajapati. He felt 
that this self, freed from all bodily experience, from 
the shapeless mass of dreams, etc., this objectless self, 
is a barren fiction. If the self is not what it knows, feels 
and reacts upon, if it is divorced from it and thus emptied 
of its content, what remdins ? " Nothing," said Indra. 
" To be free from everything is to be nothing." Gautama, 
the Buddha, takes up the analogy of a tree and asks what 
is that tree which is supposed to remain, after we tear away 
its leaves, hew down its branches, strip off its bark, etc. ? 
Peel off layer after layer of an onion, and what remains? 
Nothing. Bradley points out : " The ego that pretends to 
be anything either before or beyond its concrete psychical 
filling is a gross fiction and a mere monster, and for no 
purpose admissible. " 3 On this view in dreamless sleep 
there is no self at all. Locke declares that every drowsy 

1 Byb. Up., iv. 3. 

* Bradley: Ethical Studits, p. 53. 

s Appearance and Rtality, p. 89. 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

nod explodes the sell theory. " In sleep and trances the 
mind exists not there is no time, no succession of ideas. 
To say the mind exists without thinking is a contradiction, 
nonsense, nothing.' 1 x Indra seems to have been an em* 
piricist ages before Locke and Berkeley. " If the soul in 
a perfectly dreamless sleep thinks, feels, and wills nothing, 
is the soul then at all, and if it is, how is it ? " asks Lotze. 
" How often has the answer been given, that if this could 
happen, the soul would have no being. Why have we not 
the courage to say that as often as this happens the soul 
is not ? " * Indra has the courage to declare it.3 " It is 
indeed destroyed/' This has an important lesson which is 
again and again forgotten in Indian thought. To deny 
the life without is to destroy the god within. Those who 
think that we reach the highest point attainable, in pure 
subjectivity must turn to the dialogue of Indra and Praj&pati. 
The condition freed from the limits imposed by the organism, 
from time and space, from the existence of objects, is simple 
annihilation, according to Indra. This contentless ego, this 
abstract cogito of Descartes, this formal unity of Kant, 
this objectless subject supposed to stand behind, unrelated 
to all empirical consciousness, is an impossibility. Philo- 
sophical reflection as well as psychological analysis leads 
to this result. But Prajapati was trying to emphasise the 
identity of the self which is unaffected by the changes of 
experience. He was anxious to point out that while the 
self was not exclusive of conscious states, it was not the 
conscious states. Dr. McTaggart puts the whole point thus : 
" What does the self include ? Everything of which it is 
conscious. What does it exclude ? Equally-Everything of 
which it is conscious. What can it say is not inside it ? 
Nothing. What can it say is not outside it ? A single 
abstraction. And any attempt to remove the paradox 
destroys the self. For the two sides are inevitably con- 
nected. If we try to make it a distinct individual by 
separating it from all other things, it loses all content, of 
which it can be conscious, and so loses the very individuality 

* Berkeley's Works, vol. i. p. 34. 

M*t*pb>**", Bag- Translation, vol &, p. 317, 

3 Vinftiam cva upaiti. 



PHILOSOPEfY OF THE UPANISADS 8* 

which we started by trying to preserve. If, on the other 
hand, we try to save its content, by emphasising the inclusion 
at the expense of the exclusion, then the consciousness 
vanishes ; and since the self has no contents, but the objects 
of which it is conscious, the contents vanish also." I Indr$ 
shows the risks in conceiving the self as a transcendental 
one. The self must be shown to be the true life of the 
whole, and not a mere abstraction. Hence the next step, 
when India explains to Prajapati his difficulty in the words, 
"in truth that dreamless sleeping subject does not know 
himself that he is, nor does he know anything that exists. 
He is gone to utter annihilation, I see no good in this." 2 
Prajapati points out how it is an identity, running in and 
through differences. The whole world is the one process 
of the self-realisation of the absolute thought. " Magha- 
van ! 3 This body is mortal and all is subject to death* 
It is the abode of the self, which is immortal and without 
body. He is the person of the eye, the eye itself is the 
instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, 
he is the self, the nose is the instrument of smelling, etc." 4 
The self is shown to be not an abstract formal principle, 
but an active universal consciousness, existing, to adopt 
Hegel's phraseology, both in itself and for itself. It is 
simple self-sameness as well as varied distinctions. It is 
both subject and object. The objects we know in experi- 
ence are based on it. The true infinite self is not the self 
which is simply not finite. It is none of the limited things, 
but yet the basis of all of them. It is the universal self, 
which is immanent as well as transcendent. The whole 
universe lives and breathes in it. " The moon and the 
sun are its eyes, the four quarters of the sky its ears, the 
wind its breath. "5 It is the blazing light that burns in 

1 He$d\an Cosmology, sec. 27. * viii. xx. x. 

s Another name for Indra. 

viii. 12. Cf. Plato, who distinguishes in the Tim**$, two souls, one 
immortal and the other mortal. The mortal soul consists of passions and 
affections. It is the empirical ego which identifies itself with the perishing 
world of change and death. The immortal soul is the intelligent principle 
common to man and the world, the divine spark enclosed in human person- 
ality (Timmus and Ph*do). We have also the same distinction in Aristotle's 
inUlhctus a& ens as opposed to perishing mind and memory. 

s Muntfaka, i. x ; Chan., iii. 13. 7. 

4 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

the deeps of personality, the universal k&a from which 
all creatures proceed, 1 the vital principle of creation,* the 
subject in which the entire world moves trembling.s There 
is nothing outside it. It contains all consciousness of objects 
implicitly. There is nothing in the universe which is not 
involved in the infinite self in us. This self which embraces 
all is the sole reality containing within itself all the facts 
of nature and all the histories of experience. Our small 
selves are included in it and transcended by it. This is 
the subject which is more than the flux of presentations, 
which are only imperfect revelations of it. All our states 
of consciousness revolve round this central light. Abolish 
it, they vanish. Without a subject there will be no flux, 
no order of sensations in space or sequences in time. It 
renders possible memory and introspection, knowledge and 
morality. The Upaniads contend that this subject is the 
universal ground which is in all individuals. It is hidden 
in all things and pervades all creation. " There is no second 
outside it, no other distinct term." 4 " As breathing he is 
named breath, as speaking speech, as seeing eye, as hearing 
ear, as understanding mind, all these are but names for 
his operations." 5 It is only the self thus understood that 
can be looked upon as the permanent subject persisting 
in waking and dreaming, death and sleep, bondage and 
liberation. It is present throughout, surveying all the 
worlds. It is the universal subject and yet the universal 
object. It sees and yet sees not. As the Upaniad has it, 
" When then he sees not, yet is he seeing, although he sees 
not ; since for the seer there is no interruption of seeing 
because he is imperishable ; but there is no second beside 
him, no other distinct from him, for him to see." 6 The 
self is the whole. "I indeed am this whole universe. "7 
This universal self by its very nature cannot be per- 
ceived. As Samkara puts it, " The witness self illumines 
consciousness, but never itself is in consciousness." It is 
not a datum of experience, not an object, though all objects 

1 Chin., i. 91. * Chin., i. zz. 5. 

3 Kaftha, vi. i. 4 Brh., iv. 3. 23 ; Chin., viii. i. 3. 

s Brh., i. 4. 7 ; Kanfltaki. iii. * Brh., iv. 3. 23. 

9 Aham eva idam sarvo'smi. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 85 

are for it. It is not a thought, but all thoughts are for it. 
It is not a thing seen, but is the principle of all seeing. As 
Kant would say, the condition of the empirically known 
is not the known itself. " What I must presuppose in order 
to know an object/' says Kant, " I cannot know as an 
object." The subject of all experience cannot itself be an 
experience. If it is experience, the question arises, by 
whom is it known ? Knowledge always works dually. 
This self, therefore, is indefinable. Like all ultimate prin- 
ciples, it has only to be accepted. It is the explanation 
of all else, though it itself remains unexplained. The old 
difficulty of Comte that the subject cannot turn round 
and catch itself is not altogether imaginary. " The soul 
which is not this or that, nor aught else, is intangible, for 
it cannot be laid hold of." z The Upanisads refuse to identify 
the self with the body, or the series of mental states or the 
presentation continuum or the stream of consciousness. 
The self cannot be a relation which requires a ground of 
relations, nor a connexion of contents, which is unintelligible 
without an agent who connects. We are obliged to accept the 
reality of a universal consciousness which ever accompanies 
the contents of consciousness and persists even when there 
are no contents. This fundamental identity, which is the 
presupposition of both self and not-self, is called the Atiqan. 
None can doubt its reality.* 

The MSncJukya Upaniad gives us an analysis of con- 
sciousness leading to the same conclusion. We shall start 
with a free rendering of what it says on this point. 3 The 
soul has three conditions which are all included in a fourth. 
They are waking, dreaming, sleeping, and what is called 
turiya. The first condition is that of wakefulness, where the 
self is conscious of the common world of external objects. It 
enjoys the gross things. Here the dependence on the body 
is predominant. The second condition is that of dreaming, 
where the self enjoys subtle things/ fashions for itself a 
new world of forms with the materials of its waking ex- 
perience. The spirit is said to roam freely unfettered by 



., iii. 7. 3; iv. 4. 22. 
* Na hi ka&dt sandigdhe aha** 1 vfi nhaih veti. Bh&matl. 
s i. 2. 7. 4 See Bj-h., iv. 3. 9. 14. 



86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE U?AM$ADS 

the bonds of the body. The third is the condition of sound 
sleep, where we have neither dreams nor desires. It is 
called suupti. The soul is said to become temporarily 
one with Brahman and enjoy bliss. In deep sleep we are 
lifted above all desires and freed from the vexations of 
spirit. The oppositions are, so to say, lost in this pure- 
objectless-knowing subject condition. 1 Samkara observes 
that the phenomena of duality caused by the action of the 
mind are present in the other two conditions, but absent 
here. In several passages we are told that we taste the 
nature of absolute bliss in dreamless sleep, where a man 
is cut off from the distracting world. The soul is divine 
in origin, though clogged with the flesh. In sleep it is said 
to be released from the shackles of the body and to gain 
back its own nature. We read in an Aristotelian fragment, 
" whenever the soul is alone and by itself in sleep, it recovers 
by its proper nature." * The natural divinity of the soul 
reasserts itself when freed from the tyranny of the flesh. 
" He giveth his beloved truth in sleep." The analogy of 
eternal dreamless sleep is used to bring out how all outer 
activities are then suppressed. But there was the likelihood 
of its being confused with sheer unconsciousness. So the 
Man<Jukya Upaniad points out that the highest is not 
this dreamless sleep, but another, a fourth state of the soul, 
a pure intuitional consciousness, where there is no knowledge 
of objects internal or external. In deep sleep the spirit 
dwells in a region far above the changeful life of sense in 
absolute union with Brahman. The turiya condition brings 
out the positive aspect of the negative emphasised in the 
condition of deep sleep. " The fourth is not that which is 
' conscious of the subjective, nor that which is conscious of 
the objective, nor that which is conscious of both, nor 
that which is simple consciousness, nor that which is an 
all-sentient mass, nor that which is all darkness. It is 
unseen, transcendent, inapprehensible, uninferrable, un- 
thinkable, indescribable, the sole essence of the conscious- 
ness of self, the completion of the world, the ever peace- 
ful, all blissful, the one unit, this indeed is the At man." 3 

* See Brh., ii. x ; KautltaH, iv.; Chftn., vi. 8. i ; Bratau, iv* 4; iv. 3. 7, 

* Fragment a.* I i. 7. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 87 

It is symbolised by the* Aumkara, with its parts of A-U-M, 
the waking, the dreaming and the sleeping states. It is 
not an exclusive self, but the common ground of all, their 
basis of identity. 1 In deep sleep we may be said to reach 
an eternal unity in which all distinctions vanish and the 
entire universe is obliterated. But since this cannot be 
considered the highest state, a higher positive is suggested. 
To the empirical individual, if the not-self goes, his indi- 
viduality also vanishes. So there is a suspicion that the 
abolition of the objects would reduce the self into a thin 
abstraction, but in the highest universal self the reality of 
all objects is included. Objects of the world are known 
and loved by us only in so far as they enter our self, which 
comprehends in itself all objects of the universe and has 
nothing outside. It is the unchanged and persistent identity 
which continues in the midst of all change. The moods 
pass and vary but the self remains the same. It has no 
beginning, no end, though the objects of which it is conscious 
have a beginning and an end. " Never has the cessation 
of consciousness been experienced, or witnessed directly ; 
or if it has been, then the witness, the experiencer, himself 
still remains behind as the continued embodiment of that 
same consciousness." * It is the foundation of all existence, 
the one witness to and the only possible support of all we 
know, though the nature of the dependence of the objects 
of knowledge on the subject so insistently repeated is not 
very clear. The three conditions of the self, waking, dream- 
ing, sleeping, together with that which comprehends them 
all, are called respectively the VaiSvanara, the Taijasa, the 
Prijfia and the Turiya states.3 

From this analysis of the three states of dreaming, 
waking and sleeping, it follows that all of them are unreal, 
though not non-existent. " What is naught at the beginning 
and naught at the end must surely be naught in the middle." 
Judged by it, waking experience is not real. If it is said 

< Xrisu dh&masu yat tulyam s&m&nyam Gaugapftda's Kirikas, i. 23. 

* See Devi Bhftgavata, iii. 32. 15-16. 

s The Buddhist discrimination of the four planes of k&ma, rfipa, ar&pa 
and lokottara, answers to this division. 

Gaugapftda's Kftdkftt, i. 0. 



8* PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

that the dream states are unreal since they do not cohere 
with the rest of our experience, may it not be urged that 
the waking experience does not cohere with dreams ? 
Dreams may be coherent within themselves, even as waking 
experience is within its own bounds. The worlds seem to 
be real only in relation to the particular moods of the self. 
It is not right to apply the standard of waking experience 
to the dream world and condemn it. Dreaming and waking 
experiences are both unreal though in different degrees. 
The condition of dreamless sleep is one in which we have 
no distinct cognitions of anything internal or external. It 
is a distinctionless mass under the pall of darkness, com- 
parable to Hegel's night, in which all cows are black. We 
have here the negative condition of the highest state, freedom 
from sorrow. But Atman is not this absence of unhappiness. 
It is positive bliss. It is neither waking nor dreaming nor 
sleep, but the fourth witnessing to as well as transcending 
the three. The negative descriptions given indicate that 
we as finite cannot know the positive nature of it. The 
fourth is realised, not so much by negating the three as by 
transcending them all. It is impossible for us finite beings 
to define the character of the ideal reality, though the 
Upanisads are quite emphatic that it is not a blank. Yet 
to refute false ideas of the highest and to point the truth 
that it is no abstraction, they indulge in inadequate con- 
cepts. Strictly speaking we cannot say anything of it. 
Yet for purposes of discussion, we are obliged to use intel- 
lectual concepts with their limited validity. 

The problem of the self is one of the most important 
discussed in the Upanisads. It occurs again as the 
Adhyatma Vidya in the Bhagavadglta and the VedSnta 
Sutras. The analysis of the nature of self is the legacy of 
the Upani$ads bequeathed to the subsequent systems of 
thought. It has given rise to many misconceptions. Con- 
tradictory doctrines of the nature of self are held by Buddha 
and axhkara, Kapila and Patafijali, who all trace their views 
to the Upanisads. It was not the intention of the Upani- 
ads to make of the deeper self an abstract nothingness. It 
is the fullest reality, the completest consciousness, and not a 
mere negative calm, untroubled by any unrest and unpolluted 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 69 

by any blot or blemish. The logic of thought has in it 
a negative movement, where it rises by the repudiation of 
the finite, but this is only a stage in the onward march. 
By the negative process the self has to recognise that its 
essence is not in its finitude or self-sufficiency. By the 
positive method it finds its true self in the life and being of 
all. All things exist within this true self. Some Buddhists 
make of the self mere emptiness, and on this assumption 
rightly dismiss it as an abstraction of the metaphysician. 
We cannot find this self in any corner of the field of con- 
sciousness. Not finding it there, we rush to the conclusion 
that it is nothing. The Samkhya takes it to be a simple 
and pure, though passive, spirit, which in spite of its apparent 
simplicity has some character and uniqueness, and so we 
get the doctrine of the boundless plurality of souls. Some 
Vedantins adopt the view that the true self or Brahman 
is pure, calm, peaceful and untroubled, and hold that there 
is only one self. By throwing the emphasis on the passive 
side they run the risk of reducing it to mere emptiness. 
There are Buddhistic sects which reduce the self to mere 
intelligence, which can somehow think without any contents. 



VIII 

BRAHMAN 

We may now proceed to define the ultimate reality from 
the objective side, when it is called Brahman 1 . In the 

* The question how Brahman came to denote the supreme reality of the 
Upanisads has been answered in different ways by different scholars. 
Haug holds that Brahman means prayer, being derived from the root 
Brh, to swell or to grow. It is that which swells or grows. Sacred 
prayers cause the growth, and then it came to mean the force of nature, and 
later the supreme reality. According to Roth, Brahman is first the force 
of will directed to the gods, then it came to mean a sacred formula, and then 
the Absolute. Oldenberg thinks that in the Vedic times, when the world 
was peopled with many gods and mysterious forces capable of producing 
happiness and misery, the most powerful man was the medicine man, who 
wielded the magic spell and produced whatever effect was desired. Then 
Brahman meant a magic spell. During the time of the Brihmanas it 
referred to the sacred hymns used in the sacrifices. Perhaps some of these 
hymns were used as spells for producing magical effects. The word was 
slowly transferred to the central energy which produces the world* Deussen 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

$ 

g-Veda we have seen that the monistic idea was arrived 
at. The Upani$ads undertake the task of a more logical 
definition of the Eternal Spirit ever acting and ever resting. 
In another place we have traced the progress from the 
lower imperfect conceptions to the more adequate ones 
as formulated in the Taittiriya Upaniad. x In chapter iii 
the son approaches the father with the request to teach 
him the nature of reality from which aU things flow 
and to which all return. The son is given the general 
features of Brahman, and is asked to discover the content 
which satisfies these requirements. " That from which these 
beings are born, that in which when born they live, and that 
into which they enter at their death, that is Brahman." a 
Things of the world are ever changing their forms, and 
they cannot be considered to be real in an ultimate 
sense. Is there anything unalterably fixed underlying the 
universe of changing things, namarupa, name and form, as 
the Upanisads call them ? The son considers matter to 
be the ultimate reality. It is the most prominent aspect 
of the outer world. This view is held by the lokSyatas, or 
the materialists. The son soon discovers that matter cannot 
account for the life phenomena. Vegetable growth requires 
a different explanation. He hits upon prSLna or life as 
the ultimate principle. 3 Matter does not hold the secret 
of life, though life cannot exist without matter. There is 
something in life which enables it to absorb and transmute 
the inorganic elements. This something is the vital principle 
which in man helps to change the vegetable product into 
blood, bone and muscle. It is the principle which pervades 
the universe and binds human beings with the rest of 
creation. 4 The son is sure that life belongs to a different 
order from matter though prana is the essence of the body. 5 

holds that Brahman is prayer, which elevates the soul, when we perceive the 
truth, and the truth came to be denoted by the word. Max Mailer traces 
it to " word/' as is evident from the name Brhaspati or Vftcaspati, lord 
of speech. That which utters is Brahman (S.S., pp. 52, 70), We need not 
trouble ourselves about the etymology of the word. To us, it is tilear. Brahman 
means reality, which grows, breathes or swells. 

t Sea Reign of Religion, chap. xiii. iii. I. 

i Prtna means breath. See R.V., i. 66. x ; iii. 53. n ; x, 59. 6, 
4 Se* Pradna, ii. s Bra., i. 3. 90. See Chin., vi. a. 4. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE! UPANISADS 41 

t 

Again he is dissatisfied with the solution of pr&qta as the 
ultimate reality, for conscious phenomena which we come 
across in the animal world are not explicable by the prin- 
ciple of life. Manas, or perceptual consciousness, is a pro- 
duct distinct from life and matter. It seems to be the 
crown of the vital process. So the son believes that manas 
is Brahman. Even this will not suffice, for there are intel- 
lectual facts which mere perceptual consciousness does 
not take into account. Vijfiina or intelligence is Brahman. 1 
Some schools of Buddhism adopt this view. The son realises 
that even intellectual self-consciousness is incomplete, 
being subject to discord and imperfecti6n. It is the aim 
of the Upaniads to point out that elements of duality 
and externality persist at the intellectual level, however 
much we may try to overcome them. In knowledge and 
morality we have the subject-object relation. There must 
be something higher than mere intellect, where existence is 
no longer formulated in terms of knowledge. The unity of 
existence requires that we must transcend the intellectual 
level. Thought, as ordinarily understood, deals with objects 
viewed as beyond or other than the process of thinking. It 
reaches outwards to a somewhat other than and contrasted 
with itself. Reality is different from thought, and can 
be reached in the turiya state of highest immediacy, which 
transcends thought and its distinctions, where the individual 
coincides with the central reality. Ananda or delight is 
the highest fruition, where the knower, the known and 
the knowledge become one. Here the philosophical quest 
terminates, the suggestion being that there is nothing 
higher than ananda. This ananda is active enjoyment 
or unimpeded exercise of capacity. It is not sinking 
into nothingness, but the perfection of being.* " The 
discerning see by their superior knowledge the Atman 
which shines all bliss and immortality." 3 Strictly speaking. 
we cannot give any account of the highest reality of ananda, 
Even the question whether it is abstract or concrete is 
illogical. Intellectual necessities require us to give some 
description. It is truer to consider it concrete than abstract. 



See Ait, ill. 3 I Tait., & 5- 

See Murtaka Up. ' Muirfak*. ii. g. 



42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 

Each higher principle is more concrete and inclusive than 
the lower one, and therefore nanda, which is Brahman, 
is the most inclusive of all. From it all things flow. By 
it all things are sustained, and into it all things are dis- 
solved. The different parts, the mineral world, the plant 
life, the animal kingdom, and the human society, are not 
related to the highest in any abstract or mechanical way. 
They are one in and through that which is universal about 
them. All parts in the universe share in the light of this 
universal spirit and possess specific features on account 
of the special functions which they have to perform. The 
parts are not self-subsistent factors, but are dependent 
aspects of the one. " Sir, on what does the infinite rest ? 
On its own greatness or not even on greatness." Every- 
thing else hangs on it and it hangs on nothing. The organic 
and living nature of the relation of the parts to the whole 
is brought out in many passages. " As all spokes are con- 
tained in the axle, and in the felly of a wheel, thus also, 
all beings and all gods, all worlds and all organs, also are 
contained in that self." l " There is that ancient tree 
whose roots grow upward and whose branches go downward. 
That is the bright, Brahman, the immortal, all worlds are 
contained in it and no one goes beyond it." a 

We have defined reality as 5nanda, and thus contra- 
dicted the statement frequently made that the ultimate 
is indefinable. Constructive attempts at obtaining a com- 
prehensive reality generally end in a concrete whole. If, 
however, we try to reconcile the defined reality with the 
undefined one, which also the Upanisads support, then 
we shall have to say that Snanda in the present context 
is not the ultimate reality, but only the highest conceivable 
by the thought of man. It is not the absolute or the eternal 
being which ever exists in its own essentiality. To the 
logical mind, the whole is real, and within it falls the diversity 
of the world. The concrete Snanda is the pramSnika 
sattS, or the real revealed to thought, and answers to 
the highest Brahman accepted by RSmSnuja. The pure 
Brahman free from all the predicates is the nirupSdhika 

Bjtu, ii. 5. *5- 

* Katha* ii. 6. i. See also Tait., i. 10; B.C., xv. i. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 48 

satta, or the Nirguna Brahman accepted by Samkara. The 
former is an organised whole ; the latter is an indefinable 
real. Yet even according to Samkara it is the latter that 
shows itself as the former. The one of intuition appears 
as the whole of knowledge. 1 

This difference of view has resulted in a good deal of 
discussion about the interpretation of Snanda in the 
Upaniads. Samkara squarely says that anandamaya, by 
its suffix maya, indicates that it is only a phenomenal effect. 
Unless it were different from Atman, there can be no talk 
of reasoning about it. If it were pure Brahman, it will 
be inappropriate to give it form and attribute to it head, 
limbs, as the Taittiriya Upanisjad does. If ananda were 
Brahman there would be no separate mention of Brahman 
as the supporting tail of ananda. 3 So Samkara concludes, 
" Anandamaya Atman is an effect, and not the uncon- 
ditioned Atman." RamSnuja, on the other hand, argues that 
this ananda is Brahman. The suffix of maya indicates 
only fullness or pracurya. Though with regard to matter, 
life, etc., it is clearly stated that there is some other inside, 
anyo 'ntara Atma, no such inner reality is asserted for ananda. 
Ascribing limbs, etc., is nothing more than kalpana or im- 
agination. Puccham Brahma need not be taken as implying 
any difference between Snanda and Brahman. The two 
may be related as whole and part,3 which is sometimes the 
significance of the accusative usage. Immediately after the 
reference to anandamaya, it is said in the Upaniad 
" sokamayata," " he desired," and this masculine gender 
can only refer to anandamaya, and not to puccham Brahma, 

* The Upani$ads are definite about the fact that the supreme is in* 
definable, though they give intellectual accounts of it which are not abso- 
lutely true. If any logical description be true at all, it is R&m&nuja's way 
of putting it. Saifakara, in the true spirit of the Upani?ads, contends that 
there is a higher than the logical highest, which is R&m&nuja's. In discussing 
the philosophy of axhkara, we shall see how he establishes the inadequacy 
of the highest categories to the reality intended by them. He contends 
that we cannot say whether the absolute is finite or infinite, or both or neither. 
It is the same with ail relations like whole and part, substance and quality, 
cause and effect. A rational demonstration of the limits of thought such 
as the one we have in &aihkara is rendered possible only by the intervening 
of the great Buddhist tradition between the Upanigads and Saihkara. 

Brahma puccham prati?thft. , s Samud&yasamud&yfbh&va. 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

which is neuter. Other forms of bliss, like priya, moda, 
are included within the whole of inanda, and the disciple 
reaches his final resting-place when he gets to ftnanda. 
We have many cases in the same Upaniad where the 
word ftnanda is used as a synonym for final reality. 

It is obvious that the whole controversy is due to the 
doubt whether finanda is to be looked upon as the logical 
highest or the ultimate being. The Upaniads did not 
draw any hard and fast line of distinction between the 
simple one of intuition supported by Samkara and the 
concrete whole of Rmnuja. If we separate the two, 
it will become impossible for us to admit any distinction 
or value in the world of concrete existence. The Upaniads 
imply that the I&vara is practically one with Brahman. 
Very strict usage and meticulous philosophic accuracy 
require us to say that there is the slightest conceivable 
diminution from the absolute when we come to the self- 
conscious, I am I. 1 This quasinought is quite enough for 
Samkara to precipitate pure being, the basal thought and fact 
of all, into the world of space, time and cause. The Upaniads 
by implication admit that the moment we think the pure 
being, we make nothing the principle of distinction and 
difference, equally basal. The self-conscious God, who later 
develops into the organised whole of existence, is the maxi- 
mum of being and the minimum of non-being. He is least 
penetrated with objectivity and touched by externality. 
The One is revealed in the existences of the world, and that is 
why we are able to ascertain the degrees of reality possessed 
by the objects of the world by measuring the distance 
separating them from the One. Each lower degree con* 
sists in a diminution of the higher, though throughout 
the scale of existences from the highest to the lowest we 
have the revelation of Brahman as well as the common 
characters of space, time and cause. The lower things are 
far away from the simple being than the higher ones, so 
.much so that the Snandamaya of the Upani$ads, the 
concrete Brahman of RSmnuja, the I&vara of aihkara, 
is the nearest to it. Nothing nearer can be thought. The 
supreme Brahman or ananda at the level of vijfi&na or 

., i. 4, fo. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 45 

self-consciousness becomes the personal I&vara with a 
voluntary limitation. God or self is the ground of unity, 
and matter or not-self becomes the principle of plurality. 1 



IX 

BRAHMAN AND ATMAN 

The two, the objective and the subjective, the Brahman 
and the Atman, the cosmic and the psychical principles, are 
looked upon as identical. Brahman is Atman. 2 " He who 
is this Brahman in man, and who is that in the sun, those 
are one." 3 The transcendent conception of God held in 
the Rg-Veda is here transformed into an immanent one. 
The infinite is not beyond the finite but in the finite. The 
subjective character of the Upaniad teaching is responsible 
for this change. The identity between the subject and 
the object was realised in India before Plato was born. 
Deussen speaks of it thus : " If we strip this thought of 
the various forms, figurative to the highest degree and not 
seldom extravagant, under which it appears in the Vedanta 
texts, and fix our attention upon it solely in its philosophical 
simplicity as the identity of God and the soul, the Brahman 
and the Atman, it will be found to possess a significance 
reaching far beyond the Upaniads, their time and country ; 
nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole 
race of mankind. We are unable to look into the future, 
we do not know what revelations and discoveries are in 
store for the restlessly inquiring human spirit ; but one 
thing we may assert with confidence whatever new and 
unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may strike 
out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken, and 
from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a 
general solution is reached of the great riddle, which presents 
itself to the philosopher in the nature of things, all the more 
clearly the further our knowledge extends, the key can 
only be found where alone the secret of nature lies open 

See Tait., i. 5 ; S.B. and K.B. on V.S., i. i. 6. 'YTait., i. 5. 

I ii. 8. See also iii, xo ; Cbftn., UL 13. 7 i & M- * 4 ; B r h.^v. 5. 9 ; 
ii. i. xo. 



46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

to its from within, that is to say, in our Innermost self. It 
was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the 
Upaniads, to their immortal honour, found it when they 
recognised our Atman, our inmost individual being, as the 
Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all 
her phenomena." x This identity of subject and object is 
not a vague hypothesis, but the necessary implication of 
all relevant thinking, feeling and willing. The human self 
cannot think, conquer and love nature, were it unthinkable, 
unconquerable and unlovable. Nature is the object of 
a subject, quite rational and thoroughly intelligible, capable 
of control and worthy of love. It exists for man. The 
stars serve as lamps for his feet, and the darkness to lull 
him into slumber. Nature summons us to the spiritual 
reality of life and answers the needs of the soul. It is 
formed, vitalised and directed by the spirit. From the 
beginning of reflection this oneness of subject and object, 
the existence of one central reality, pervading and embracing 
all, has been the doctrine of the devout. Religious mysticism 
and deep piety witness to the truth of the great saying, 
" That art thou," " Tat tvamasi." We may not understand 
it, but that does not give us a sufficient right to deny it. 
The different conceptions of Brahman correspond to the 
different ideas of the Atman, and vice versa. The stages 
of waking, dreaming, sleeping, and the conception of ecstasy 
of the self, are clearly discriminated in the later Vedanta 
writings and answer to the different conceptions of Brahman. 
The highest Brahman which is Snanda is just Atman, 
as realised in the fourth or the turiya state. There the 
object and the subject are one. The seer, the seeing eye 
and the object seen merge together in one whole. When 
we identify the Atman with the self-conscious individual, 
Brahman is viewed as the self-conscious I&vara with a 
force opposed to him. As the self-conscious individual 
will be a mere abstraction apart from some content or 
object from which he derives his being, even so the I&vara 
requires an dement opposing him. The conception of 
I&vara is the highest object of the religious consciousness. 
When the Atman is identified with the mental and vital 

i Philosophy of th* Upaniftd*, pp. 39-40. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 47 

self of man (manas and pr&na), Brahman is reduced to 
the Hiragyagarbha or the cosmic soul, which comes between 
the ISvara and the soul of man. This Hiranyagarbha is 
looked upon as related to the universe in the same way as 
the individual soul is related to its body. We see here 
the influence of the Rg-Veda. The world is supposed to 
have a consciousness and a will. Mind always goes with 
body, vaster orders of mind accompanying vaster orders 
of body. The world in which we live has its own mind, 
and this mind is Hiranyagarbha. This conception of world 
soul appears in the Upanisads under various names and 
forms. It is called Karya Brahma, or the effect God, the 
Brahma of Natura Naturata, as distinguished from the 
Krana Brahma or the Causal God of ISvara, or the natura 
naturans. This effect God is the totality of created exist- 
ences of which all finite objects are parts. The conscious 
totality of all effects is Brahma or Hiranyagarbha. It is 
not radically different from the Brahman. Brahman is 
the simple, individual, absolutely self-identical, One, 
without a second. Once He is looked at as the creator or 
Igvara, again as the Created or Hiranyagarbha. Even 
this Brahma comes from the Brahman l " He is the source 
of Brahma " ; the entire objective universe is sustained 
by this knowing subject. While the individual subjects 
pass away; he lives contemplating the world. When we 
identify the Atman with our body, Brahman becomes the 
Cosmos or the Virat. Virat is the all, the hypostasisation 
of the conception of the world as a whole. It is the totality 
of things, the sum of all existence. " This is he, the internal 
Atman of all created things whose head is Agni, whose eyes 
are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the four directions, 
whose speech is the Vedas which have emanated from Him, 
whose breath is Vayu, whose heart is all the universe, and 
from whose feet the earth proceeded."* The body of the 
Virit is made of the material objects in their aggregate. 
He is the manifested God whose senses are the directions, 
whose body is the five elements, and whose consciousness 
glows with the feeling " I am all." Prior to the evolution 
of the Virit nmst have occurred the evolution of the Sfitrat- 

iii. 13. 3. * Mmtfaka, ii. i. 4. 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

man, the cosmic intelligence or Hiragyagarbha, having for 
his vehicle the totality of subtle bodies. Vir&t comes into 
being after Hira^yagarbha. In the form of Vir&t Hira&ya- 
garbha becomes visible. Till the effect is evolved, this 
SfLtritman is only pure consciousness. 1 He abides as a 
mere potentiality of intelligence and motion (Vijfiina and 
Kriyi) in the first cause. The Vir&t is the universal self 
manifested in the gross physical matter of the world, Brahma 
is the same manifested in the subtle matter of the universe. 
The Stitr&tman is Hiranyagarbha. The supreme self beyond 
cause and effect is the Brahman, but when it becomes self- 
conscious with a non-ego opposed to it we have the Igvanu* 
The following table suggests the scheme : 

Subject (Atman). Object (Brahman). 

1. The bodily self (VaiSvtaara). i. Cosmos (Vir&t). 

2. The vital self (Taijasa). 2. The soul of the world (Hira- 

nyagarbha). 

3. The intellectual self (Prajna). 3 Self-consciousness (14vara). 

4. The intuitive self (Turiya). 4 Ananda (Brahman). 

If a logical account is permitted, then we may say that 
the Brahman of the Upaniads is no metaphysical ab- 
straction, no indeterminate identity, no void of silence. 
It is the fullest and the most real being. It is a living 
dynamic spirit, the source and container of the infinitely 
varied forms of reality. The distinctions, instead of being 
dissolved away as illusory, are transfigured in the highest 
reality. The syllable " AUM," generally employed to repre- 
sent the nature of Brahman, brings out its concrete character.3 
It is the symbol of the supreme spirit, the " emblem of the 
most high/' 4 " Aum " is the symbol of concreteness as 
well as completeness. It stands for the three principal 
qualities of the supreme spirit personified as Brahma, 
Virju and Siva. " A " is Brahma the creator, " U " is 
ViQU the preserver, and " M " is Siva the destroyer. 5 



In the Btifupti condition we have the subject self with the object 
world supprewed, though not abolished. 

i Awn is only the sign of the Eternal spirit, the thing ftyprt*^ even at 
aa idol tignifict Vi*nn " pratimeva Vwofe " (SainkaraComm., Tait., i. 6). 

4 Man*., ti. 83; *ee alto Tait., i. 7 ; Katna, i, a. 15-16. 

s See Chin,, i. 3. 6-7. B r h, Up., ii. 3. i, and viii. 3. 4-5. * 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 40 

The lift Upaniad asks us to warship Brahman both in 
its manifested and unmanifested conditions. 1 It is not an 
abstract monism that the Upaniads offer us. There is 
difference but also identity. Brahman is infinite not in 
the sense that it excludes the finite, but in the sense that 
it is the ground of all finites. It is eternal not in the sense 
that it is something back beyond all time, as though there 
were two states temporal and eternal, one of which superseded 
the other, but that it is the timeless reality of all things in 
time. The absolute is neither the infinite nor the finite, 
the self or its realisation, the one life or its varied expressions, 
but is the real including and transcending the self and its 
realisation, life and its expression. It is the spiritual spring 
which breaks, blossoms and differentiates itself into number* 
less finite centres. The word Brahman means growth, and 
is suggestive of life, motion and progress, and not death, 
stillness or stagnation. The ultimate reality is described 
as sat, cit and ananda existence, consciousness, and 
bliss. " Knowledge, power and action are of its nature." 
It is self-caused. 2 Taittiriya says Brahman is existence, 
consciousness and infinity. It is a positive reality, " Full 
is that, full is this." 3 It is obvious that the ultimate 
reality is not thought, or force, or being exclusively, but 
the living unity of essence and existence, of the ideal and 
real, of knowledge, love and beauty. But as we have 
already said, it can only be described negatively by us, 
though it is not a negative indeterminate principle. 



INTELLECT AND INTUITION 

The ideal of intellect is to discover the unity which 
comprehends both the subject and the object. That there 
is such a unity is the working principle of logic and life. To 
find out its contents is the aim of philosophic endeavour. 
But the enterprise is doomed to disappointment on account 
of tite inherent incapacity of intellect to, grasp the whole. 



1 Ubhayam saha, both together. * Sv*ymra-bhfi lift, vii. 

i Brb., v. i. i. i. 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

Intellect, with its symbols and shibboleths, creeds and con- 
ventions, is not by itself adequate t0 the grasp of the real, 
" from which all speech with the mind turns away unable 
to reach it." * " The eye does not go thither, nor speech 
nor mind. We do not know. We do not understand how 
any one can teach it." * The ultimate reality cannot be 
made into an objective representation which the intellect 
can grasp. " How should he know him by whom he 
knows all this ? How, O Beloved, should he know himself 
the knower." 3 Objective knowledge of the subject is im- 
possible. It is " unseen but seeing, unheard but hear- 
ing, unperceived but perceiving, unknown but knowing." 4 
Atmao: is not non-existent, simply because it cannot be 
objectively represented. Though man's intellectual capacities 
are not adequate for its comprehension, still they will have 
no existence but for its "That which one cannot think 
with the mind, but that by which they say the mind is 
made to think, know that alone to be the Brahman." 6 
Intellect works with the categories of space, time, cause 
and force, which involve us in deadlocks and antinomies. 
Either we must postulate a first cause, in which case 
causality ceases to be a universal maxim, or we have an 
endless regress. The puzzle cannot be solved by intellect, 
pure and simple. It must confess itself to be bankrupt 
when ultimate questions arise. " The gods are in Indra ; 
Indra is in the Father God, the Father God is in Brahma, 
but in what is Brahma? " and Yajnavalkya answers: "Ask 
not too much." 7 Our intellectual categories can give 
descriptions of the empirical universe under the forms of 
space, time and cause, but the real is beyond these. While 
containing space, it is not spatial ; while including time, 
it transcends time ; while it has a causally bound system 
of nature within it, it is not subject to the law of cause. 
The self-existent Brahman is independent of time, space 

' Taittirfya, ii. 4. 

* Kena, ii. 3 ; MmxJaka, ii. i ; see Katha, i. 3. co. 

3 Bfh., ii. 4. 13 ; see also iii. 4. 2. 

4 Bj-h., iii. 7. 23 ; see iii. 8. xi. 

5 See Brh., iii. 8. n ; ii. 4, 14 ; iv. 5. 15. 

* Kena. ? Brh., iii. 6. x. 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 51 

and cause. The space independence is brought out crudely 
in the Upani^ads. Brahman is said to be omnipresent, 
all-pervading, infinitely great and infinitely small. " That 
which is above the heaven, O Grgi, and that which is 
beneath the earth, that which men call the past, present 
and future, all that is woven within and throughout in 
space. But wherein then is space woven within and with- 
out ? In truth, in this imperishable one, is space woven 
within and throughout, O Gargi." x Brahman is described 
as being free from the limitations of time. It is viewed 
as an eternity without beginning and end, or as an instan- 
taneous duration occupying no definite time interval. He 
is independent of past and future,* and lord of all,3 at 
whose feet time rolls along. 4 In emphasising the independ- 
ence of causal relations Brahman is represented to be an 
absolutely static being, free from all the laws of becom- 
ing of which the universal rule is causality. This way of 
establishing Brahman's independence of causal relations 
countenances the conception of Brahman as absolute self- 
existence and unchanging endurance, and leads to mis- 
conceptions. Causality is the rule of all changes in the 
world. But Brahman is free from subjection to causality. 
There is no change in Brahman though all change is based 
on it. There is no second outside it, no other distinct 
from it. We have to sink all plurality in Brahman. 
All proximity in space, succession in time, interdependence 
of relations rest on it. The comprehension of this profound 
philosophic synthesis cannot be obtained so long as we 
remain at the level of intellect. The Upaniads assert 
sometimes that thought gives us imperfect, partial pictures 
of reality, and at other times that it is organically incapable 
of reaching reality. It deals with relations and cannot 
grasp the relationless absolute. But there is nothing on 
earth existing in space or time which is not an appearance 
of the absolute. No knowledge is entirely false, though 
none is entirely true. The nearest approach to truth is 
the conception of an organised whole, though it is not 
completely true on account of the relational character which, 

* Brh., iii. 8. 7 ; see also iv. 2. 4 ; Chan,, iii. 14. 3, and viii. 34. 7. 

* K&tha* & 14* s Brh., iv. 4. 15. iv* 4. 16. 17. 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

however near to cancellation it may have come, is never 
absolutely abolished. It is the highest form of the absolute 
the mind of man can hit upon. Intellect, in the sense of 
mere understanding, working with the limited categories of 
time, space and cause, is inadequate. Reason also fails, 
though it takes us beyond understanding. It does not help 
us to attain reality, which is not merely an idea but a spirit. 
An idea of reason is an imperfect fragment of reality which 
is more than idea. The real is neither true nor false. Our 
judgments about the real may be true or false, since they 
imply the dualism between idea and reality. We have to 
pass beyond thought, beyond the clash of oppositions, 
beyond the antinomies that confront us when we work 
with the limited categories of abstract thinking, if we are 
to reach the real where man's existence and divine being 
coincide. It is when thought becomes perfected in 
intuition that we catch the vision of the real. The 
mystics the world over have emphasised this fact. Pascal 
dwells on the incomprehensibility of God, and Bossuet 
bids us not to be dismayed by the divergencies, but regard 
them all trustfully as the golden chains that meet beyond 
mortal sight at the throne of God. 

According to the Upaniads there is a higher power 
which enables us to grasp this central spiritual reality. 
Spiritual things require to be spiritually discerned. The 
Yoga philosophy is a practical discipline pointing out the 
road to this realisation. Man has the faculty of divine 
insight or mystic intuition, by which he transcends the 
distinctions of intellect and solves the riddles of reason. 
The chosen spirits scale the highest peak of thought and 
intuit the reality. By this intuitive realisation " the un- 
heard becomes heard, the unperceived becomes perceived, 
and the unknown becomes known." * The problems raised 
by intellect solve themselves the moment we transcend 
reasoning and start to live the religious life.* The Upani- 
$ads ask us therefore to lay aside our pride of intellect 
and self-consciousness, and approach facts with the fresh 
outlook of a child. " Let a Brahmin renounce learning 

' Chlndogya, vi. 13 ; see also Bfh. ii. 4. 5. 
* Mnrtaka, iii. z. 8. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 58 

and become as a child/ 1 x No man shall enter into the 
kingdom of God except he first become as a little child. 
The highest truths are to be felt by the simple and pure- 
minded, and not proved to the sophisticated intellect. 
" Let hiin not seek after many words, for that is mere weari- 
ness of tongue." * " Not by learning is the Atman attained, 
not by genius and much knowledge of books/' 3 It is attained 
by the mystics in their moments of illumination. It is 
direct knowledge or immediate insight. In the mystic 
experience the soul finds itself in the presence of the highest. 
It is lost in awareness, contemplation and enjoyment of 
the ultimate Reality. It does not know what it is when 
it reaches it. There is nothing higher than it. Other 
things are all in it. It then fears no evil, no untruth, but 
is completely blessed. This spiritual vision relieves us 
from all passion and suffering. The soul in its exaltation 
feels itself to be at one with what it sees. Plotinus says : 
" In the vision of God, that which sees is not reason, but 
something greater than and prior to reason, something 
presupposed by reason, as is the object of vision. He who 
then sees himself, when he sees, will see himself as a simple 
being, will be united to himself as such, will feel himself 
become such. We ought not even to say that he will see, 
but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible 
any longer to distinguish seer and seen, and not boldly to 
affirm that the two are one. He belongs to God and is 
one with Him, like two concentric circles ; they are one 
when they coincide and two only when they are separated/' 
All the aspirations of the human mind, its intellectual 
demands, its emotional desires, and its volitional ideals 
are there realised. It is the supreme end of man's effort, 
the termination of personal life. "This is the supreme 
end of that, this is the supreme treasure of that, this is 
the supreme dwelling of that, this is the supreme joy of 

1 Brh., iii. 5. i. This translation is adopted by Deussen and Gongh, 
though Max Mailer translates thus: "Let a Bithmin after he has done 
with learning wish to stand by real strength." This rests on the inferior 
reading of balytna in lien of Wy***\ "tasmid brihmagab 
nirvidya bftlyena ti**hiset." 

Brh., iv. 4. ax. 9 Katha, u. 13. 

4 Inge : Plotinus, vol. ii., p. 140. 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

that/ 1 * It is on a level with perceptual experience, but, 
unlike the latter, it is not objective and verifiable by others. 
It cannot, like inferential knowledge, be communicated to 
others. It is impossible to give a formal exposition of it. 
The mystic insight is inarticulate. As to a man born blind 
we cannot explain the beauty of a rainbow or the glory 
of a sunset, even so to the non-mystic the vision of the 
mystic cannot be described. " God put it into my head, 
and I cannot put it into yours/' is the last word of the 
mystic experience. Simply because it is incommunicable, 
it does not become less valid than other forms of know- 
ledge. We can describe this experience only by metaphors. 
For the light blinds us and makes us dumb. We cannot 
render a full report of the ineffable. Bahva, when asked 
by king Vakali to explain the nature of Brahman, kept 
silent, and when the king repeated his request, the sage 
broke out into the answer : " I tell it to you, but you do not 
understand it, Santo 'yam atma : * this Atman is peaceful, 
quiet/' To any suggested definitions of intellect we can 
only answer, it is not this, it is not this. 3 The negative 
definitions point out how the positive attributes known to 
us are inadequate to the highest. " There is no measure 
of him whose glory verily is great." 3 Contradictory pre- 
dicates are attached to Brahman to indicate that we are 
obliged to use negative conceptions so long as we employ 
the dialectics of intellect, though positive features are 
revealed when Brahman is intuited. "It is subtler than 
the subtle, greater than the great/' 4 " It moves, it does 
not move ; it is far and it is near ; it is within all this and 
without all this/' 5 These seemingly inconsistent accounts 
are not the sign of any confusion of thought. 

The absolute is implied in all experience, for every object 
of the world is based on the absolute, though none of them 
expresses it completely. So those who imagine they do not 

* Ye$isya parang, gatifc, ye$3sya parang, saxnpat, yefo'sya paramo 
lokafe, ye$o'sya paramft &nandafe. (Bjrh., iv. 3. 32). 

See Brh., Ui. 9. 26 ; iv. 2. 4. ; iv. 4. 22. ; iv. 5. 15 ; ii. 3. 6 ; Katha, 
ill. 15 ; Pra6na, iv. zo ; Ch&ndogya, vii. 24. i ; Muirfaka, i. t 7 ; ii. i. 2 ; 
iii. i. 7-8. 

3 Yajur-Veda. 4 veta6vatara, iii. 20 ; Kena, i. 3. 5 lt, v. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 55 

know the absolute, do know it, though imperfectly ; and those 
who think they know the absolute really do not know it 
completely. It is a state of half-knowledge and half- 
ignorance. The Kena Upaniad says : " It is unknown to 
those who know and known to those who do not know. x 
The Upaniads do not maintain that intellect is a useless 
guide. The account of reality given by it is not false. It 
fails only when it attempts to grasp the reality in its fullness. 
Everywhere else it succeeds. What the intellect investigates 
is not the unreal, though it is not the absolutely real. The 
antinomies of cause and effect, substance and attribute, 
good and evil, truth and error, subject and object, are due 
to the tendency of man to separate terms which are related. 
Fichte's puzzle of self and not-self, Kant's antinomies, 
Hume's opposition of facts and laws, Bradley's contradic- 
tions, can all be got over, if we recognise that the opposing 
factors are mutually complementary elements based on one 
identity. Intellect need not be negated, but has only to 
be supplemented. A philosophy based on intuition is not 
necessarily opposed to reason and understanding. Intuition 
can throw light on the dark places which intellect is not 
able to penetrate. The results of mystic intuition require 
to be subjected to logical analysis. And it is only by this 
process of mutual correction and supplementation that 
each can live a sober life. The results of intellect will be 
dull and empty, unfinished and fragmentary, without the 
help of intuition, while intuitional insights will be blind and 
dumb, dark and strange, without intellectual confirmation. 
The ideal of intellect is realised in the intuitive experience, 
for in the supreme are all contraries reconciled. Only by 
the comradeship of scientific knowledge and intuitive ex- 
perience can we grow into true insight. Mere reasoning 
will not help us to it.* If we content ourselves with the 
verdict of intellect, then we shall have to look upon the 
plurality and independence of individuals as the final word 
of philosophy. Competition and struggle will be the end 
of the universe. Abstract intellect will lead us to false 
philosophy and bad morals. Brahman is concealed by 
such knowledge. 3 The unreflecting attitude is perhaps 

' ii. 3. Katha, ii. 9. s Medhayft pihitab. Tait. Up. 



W PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ABS 

better than this kind of intellectuaUsm, " All who worship 
what is not knowledge enter into blind darkness; tbo 
who delight in knowledge enter, as it were, into greater 
darkness." 1 An intellectual knowledge of diversity with* 
out the intuitive realisation is worse than the blind ignorance 
of faith, bad as it is. The contradictions of life and logic 
have to be reconciled in the spirit of Emerson's Brahml. 

They reckon ill who leave me out ; 

When me they fly I am the wings ; 
I am the doubter and the doubt. 

The one eternal spirit expresses, embraces, unifies and 
enjoys the varied wealth of the world with all its passions 
and paradoxes, loyalties and devotions, truths and contra- 
dictions. Weak souls, unaware of this all-embracing reality, 
grow weary of the fight, intellectual, aesthetic and moral. 
But they have to draw courage from the fact that the joy 
of harmony has to be derived from the struggle of discordant 
elements. The seeming contradictions belong to the life 
of spirit. The one spirit shows its being in all the opposi- 
tions of life and thought, the puzzles of Hume, the problems 
of Kant, the conflicts of empiricism and the dogmas of 
speculation. 

By insisting on intuition more than on thought, on 
&nanda more than on vijfi&na, the Upaniads seem to 
support the non-dualism referred to in the Introduction. 
So long as we skim on the surface of reality with the notions 
of thought, we do not get at the deeper spirit. In Snanda 
man is most and deepest in reality. In the unexplored 
depths of individual experience, the inner Snandamaya, 
lies the stuff of reality. Intellectual systems disdain to 
descend into the rich mine of life. Whatever is reduced 
to vijfiina has become unreal, though it tends to become 
universal and objective. What is not conceptualised or 
categorised is the truly subjective. The organised whole 
of vijfi&na gives a logical impress to identity. The intuition 
shows up the fact of identity. In trying to know the identity 
we superficialise it by breaking it into differences and try 
to get them back to the identity by constructing a system. 

* Bfh., iv. 4-10 ; tee la, be. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE OPANIADS T 



the fact once broken into the relations can never 
through mere logic have its oneness restored. As we have 
mart than once observed, the first touch of logic is responsible 
for the transformation of the One into a system. 

XI 

CREATION 

It is clear from our account of the nature of Brahman 
that the Upaniads are dissatisfied with the materialist 
and vitalist theories of evolution. Matter cannot develop 
life or consciousness unless it had the potentialities of them 
in its nature. No amount of shocks from the external 
environment can extort life out of mere matter. Ananda 
cannot be the end of evolution unless it was also the beginning 
of it. The end is present throughout, though in a suppressed 
form. The individual things of the world possess the 
feature^ of their ultimate source and end. " Whatever 
there is belonging to the son belongs to the father ; whatever 
there is belonging to the father belongs to the son." x Every- 
thing in the world, not merely the human individual, is 
in essence the ultimate reality itself. Development means 
the manifestation of the potentialities of things by the 
removal of the obstructing energies. From the scientific 
point of view, we notice the different degrees of development 
in the things of the world. The philosopher is interested 
in the common ground of unity. The multiplicity of the 
world is based on the one spirit. " Who indeed could live, 
who breathe, should not this Snanda be in akaa ? " The 
sun rises punctually, the stars run in their courses, and all 
things stand in their order and faint not in their watches 
because of the eternal spirit which slumbers not nor sleeps. 
" All shine after Him who shines. By His radiance is all 
this illumined/' 3 Ananda is the beginning and the end 
of the world, the cause as well as the effect, the root as 
well as the shoot of the universe.4 The efficient and the 

1 Aitareya Ara^yaka, ii. x. 8. x. 

* Tait., ii. i Muirfaka, ii. a. 10. 

Mdla and tflla, Aitareya Ara^yaka, ii. x* 8. x. 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

final causes are one. The matter with which the process 
of evolution starts is not an independent entity. It has 
hidden in it the highest Snanda. The course of development 
is a transition from the potential to the actual. Matter 
has more potential in it than life. In the graduated scale 
of the types of existence, the later is the more evolved or 
the formed, and the earlier is the more potential or the 
unformed. To use the words of Aristotle, the earlier is 
the matter and the later is the form. Matter is the passive 
principle which requires to be energised or informed. We 
have in the logical accounts a god overlooking matter, 
stirring it up into motion. This god is prajfi&na, or the 
eternally active self-conscious reason. 1 He is responsible for 
the whole realm of change. The Upaniads fight shy of 
the conception of an omnipotent mechanic fashioning pre- 
existing matter into the universe. If God excludes matter, 
even though the latter is reduced to a mere potentiality, 
we cannot escape dualism, since Go4 would remain opposed 
to matter. Such a dualism is the characteristic feature 
of the system of Aristotle with its distinction of the first 
mover and the first matter. For the Upaniads, both 
form and matter, the ever active consciousness and the 
passive non-consciousness, are aspects of a single reality. 
Matter itself is a god. 3 Its first forms of fire, water, and 
earth are looked upon as divine, since they are all informed 
by the one spirit. The Samkhya dualism is repugnant to 
the Upaniads. The transcendent reality is the ground 
or explanation of the struggle between spirit and matter. 3 
The whole world is conceived as possessing an identity of 
purpose as well as a common substratum of change. The 
Upaniads bring out in several fanciful and mythological 
accounts of creation the great truth of the oneness of the 
world. Brahman is the sole and the whole explanation 
of the world, its material and efficient cause. The entities 
of the world are knots in the rope of development, which 
begins with matter and ends in 9nanda. 

99 That created itself by itself/' 4 " He creates the world 

* Aitareya Ara^yaka, i. 3. 3, 6. 

* Chin.* vi. 8. 4-6. 3 PraSna, i. 3. 
Tait. Up. See also Bfh., ii. i. 20 ; Murfaka, i. i. 7 ; ii. i. i. 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANBABS 59 

and then enters it." I A personal god, Praj&pati, tired of 
solitude, draws forth from himself everything that exists, 
or produces the world after having divided himself into 
two, one half male and the other half female. 9 Sometimes 
the personal or created being is represented as himself pro- 
ceeding from a material substratum. On other occasions 
the primary substance of things is represented as manifesting 
itself in the created existence.3 The Atman pervades things 
as the salt which has dissolved in water pervades the water ; 
from the Atman things spring as the sparks fly out from the 
fire, as threads from the spider, or sound from the flute. 4 
The theory of emanation where the bringing of a product 
into existence does not affect the source of the product is 
also suggested. The light coming from the sun leaves 
the sun unchanged. This seems to be the justification 
for the later theory that the individual is a mere abhasa or 
appearance of Brahman. The metaphors of the spinning of the 
web by the spider, the bearing of the child by the mother, the 
production of notes from musical instruments, attempt to 
bring out the intimate relationship between the cause and the 
effect. It is the tad at my a or oneness between Brahman and 
the world that is conveyed in all this wealth of symbol and 
image. The external world is not something separate, 
existing side by side with the Atman. The ultimate ground 
of being, Brahman, and the empirical state of being, the 
world are not different. The world of plurality can be 
reduced without residuum into the everlasting one, Brahman. 
The Upaniads are decisive about the principle that Brah- 
man is the sole source of life in all that lives, the single thread 
binding the whole plurality into a single unity* When the 
problem of the co-existence of the plurality and unity is 
taken up, the Upaniads speak in the language of similes 
and symbols, but do not give any definite answer. We 

Brh.. iv. 7. 

Brh., 1. 2. 14. We have something similar to this in the Chinese doctrine 
of Yang and Yin. The primeval chaos is said to have been broken up by 
the antagonism of these two principles of expansion and contraction. The 
Yang is the male force in all creatures and the Yin is the female. Compare 
also the view of Empedodes. 

I Chan., iii. 39. 

4 Chan., vii. 21, a ; vi. 2. i ; Brh., iv. 5 ; Mungaka, ii. 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI? ADS 

cannot in the absence of knowledge of Brahman dogmatise 
about the relation of the empirical world to Brahman. The 
two cannot be unrelated, for all that is, is one, and yet we 
do not know how precisely they are one. The former 
aspect is brought out in the argument that Brahman is 
the material as well as the efficient cause of the world; 
the latter when it is said that we do not know anything 
of it at all. It is m&y&, or mysterious, or anirvacanlya 
(inexplicable), as Samkara puts it. We cannot ask how 
the relationless Brahman is related to the world. The 
presumption is that the world of relations does not in any 
way affect the nature of Brahman. The destruction of 
the world of experience does not in the least take away 
from the being of Brahman. Brahman can exist and does 
exist apart from the world of relations. The world is not 
an essential factor in the existence of Brahman. A reciprocal 
dependence of the world on Brahman and vice versa would 
be to reduce Brahman to the level of the world and subject 
it to the categories of time and purpose. The incapacity 
to define the relation of the absolute to the world is not 
to be construed as a repudiation of the world as a screen 
imagined by the finite man, which hides the absolute. For 
it is declared that the world of space, time and cause has 
its reality in Brahman. The absolute is so far present in 
this world of relations as to enable us to measure the distance 
of the things of the world from the absolute and evaluate 
their grades of reality. Brahman is in the world, though 
not as the world. The Upaniads do not face the question 
directly. The only way to reconcile the several accounts 
is by taking our stand on the absolute self-sufficiency of 
Brahman. The perfection of Brahman implies that all 
the worlds, states and aspects, and all the manifestations, 
past, present and future, are realised in it in such wise 
that they are nothing without it, though it is independent 
of all other existence. If without conforming to the strict 
philosophical position, that we do not know the precise 
relation between the Brahman and the world, we proceed 
to characterise it, it is truer to say that the world is the 
self-limitation of the supreme than that it is a creation of 
it. For the creation of the world by God would imply 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 1 

that God was alone once upon a time, and at a certain 
point in His history He created the world. It is not right 
to look upon God as cause antecedent in time to the world 
as effect. It is better to make the world the expression 
of God* As a matter of fact, in many passages the Upan^ 
ads declare that the world is only a development of 
the absolute spirit. Nature is a system of spontaneity 
or self-evolving autonomy, since it is the energising of the 
absolute. In this development, the first stage is represented 
by the rise of the two factors of a self-conscious God and 
the passive potentiality of matter. The ultimate fact is 
the self-sufficiency of Brahman, and we cannot say how the 
world is related to it. If we insist on some explanation, 
the most satisfactory one is to make the absolute a unity 
with a difference or a concrete dynamic spirit. We then 
reach the self and the not-self, which interact and develop 
the whole universe. 1 Self-expression becomes the essence 
of the absolute. Activity is the law of life. Force is 



1 An attempt is made by Babu Bhagavan Das, in his translation of a 
work called Pranavavada, attributed t* Gargyayana, to interpret a great 
saying of the Upanisads, aham etat na, "I not this," into a highly philoso- 
phical doctrine. Aham or self is the self-conscious Isvara. Etat is nature 
or not-self. The relation between the two is signified by na, a negation. 
" The self is not the not-self " In the syllable A UM, " A " represents the 
self. " U " the not-self, and " M " the negation of the two, but all these 
three are rolled into the " AUM," the Pranava. The world is interpreted 
to be a negative reflection of the Aham. It is affirmed by the self for its 
own realisation. Etat is the unreal shadow, while Aham is the reality. 
The interpretation is ingenious; but we have to remember that what is 
denied is not the Etat (not-self) as the reflexion of Aham (self) but only 
the Etat (not-self) as cut off from Aham (self). The many as separate 
and apart from the One is denied. Brahman the reality causes, if such a 
term is legitimate, all difference. In Indian thought this symbol AUM 
stands for many things. Every kind of trinity is represented by AUM. 
Being, non-being and becoming ; birth, life and death ; Prakrti, Jlvatman 
and Paramatman ; Sattva, Rajas and Tamas ; past, present and future ; 
Brahmft, Visnu and Siva. The conception of Brahma. Visnu and Siva 
emphasises the different aspects of the one Supreme, which contains the 
three conditions. God by a free act of His will creates, or more philosophically 
posits, an eternal universe. This positing God is Brahma. He views it, 
contemplates it, sustains it, enjoys it as being distinct from himself. This 
God is Visnu. He receives it back into his own unity as an indissoluble 
element of his being, then he is Siva. Those who imagine that the three 
states are exclusive, postulate three personal agencies embodying the three 
different functions. 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 

inherent in existence. M2LyS, in the sense of energy, is 
potentially eternal in being. 

There is hardly any suggestion in the Upaniads that the 
entire universe of change is a baseless fabric of fancy, a mere 
phenomenal show or a world of shadows. The artistic and 
poet souls of the Upaniads lived always in the world of 
nature and never cared to fly out of it. The Upaniads 
do not teach that life is a nightmare and the world a barren 
nothing. Rather is it pulsing and throbbing with the 
rhythm of the world harmony. The world is God's revela- 
tion of Himself. His joy assumes all these forms.* But 
there is a popular view which identifies the Upaniad 
doctrine with an abstract monism, which reduces the rich 
life of this world into an empty dream. If we start with 
the facts of everyday experience and try to account for 
them, we are reduced to the two factors of a self-conscious 
I&vara and indeterminate matter. Intellectually we are 
convinced of the oneness of these two. Our difficulty is 
the reconciliation between the two : subject and object 
on the one hand, and the Brahman explicitly asserted by 
the Upaniads on the other. The real is one, yet we have 
the two. It is from this duality that the difference of the 
world arises. We are confronted with a blank wall. If 
philosophy is bold and sincere, it must say that the relation 
cannot be explained. The one somehow becomes two. 
This seems to be the most logical view in the circum- 
stances : " The immanence of the absolute in finite centres 
and of finite centres in the absolute, I have always set 
down as inexplicable ... to comprehend it is beyond us 
and even beyond all intelligence." * The inexplicabilty 
of the relation between the two is assumed by the Upani^ads, 
and the later Vedanta gives to it the name of my. 

The difficulty of giving a satisfactory explanation is 
traced to the imperfection of the human mind, which employs 
inadequate categories of space, time and cause, which are 

* Anandarflpam amftam yad vibhati. 

Bradley : Mind, No. 74, p. 154. Cf. Green : " The old question, why 
God made the world, has never been answered, nor will be. We know not 
why the world should be ; we only know that there it is." ProUgomena to 
Etkti*. Sec. too. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 68 

self-contradictory. The aspects of the world known to 
them are fragmentary and are not genuinely real. They 
are appearances somehow in and of, but not for reality. 
Everything we come across in our finite experience breaks 
down somewhere or other and becomes contradictory. 
While all finite experiences are limited and incomplete, 
they are so in different degrees, and it is not right to put 
them all on a general level or give to them all equal reality 
or, more accurately, equal unreality. The doctrine of may5 
gives abstract expression to this general feature of all .ex- 
perience of the finite that it falls short of the absolute. 

While intellectual modesty born of the consciousness 
of human imperfection compelled the thinkers of the 
Upaniads to rest in negative statements of the supreme 
reality, the false imitators of the Upaniad ideal, with an 
extreme of arrogant audacity, declare that Brahman is 
an absolutely homogeneous impersonal intelligence a most 
dogmatic declaration alien to the true spirit of the 
Upaniads. Such a positive characterisation of the nature 
of Brahman is illogical for even Samkara says that the 
real is non-dual, advaita, and nothing positive. 

There are passages, according to Thibaut, " whose 
decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending 
all qualities, as one undifferentiated mass of impersonal 
intelligence."' " And as the fact of the appearance of the 
manifold world cannot be denied, the only way open to 
thoroughly consistent speculation was to deny at any rate 
its reality, and to call it a mere illusion due to an unreal 
principle, with which Brahman is indeed associated, but 
which is unable to break the unity of Brahman's nature 
just on account of its own unreality." * Maya, according 
to Thibaut, reconciles the appearance of diversity with the 
reality of the One, but unfortunately the conception of 
an abstract intelligence is a meaningless notion, which is 
disallowed by the anti-dogmatist attitude of the Upaniad 
theory. The Upani$ads do not support an abstract con- 
ception of the ultimate reality. Their philosophy is not 
so much a monism as an advaitism (not twoness). The 
distinction of subject and object is not absolute, though 

^Introduction to V.S., p. cxxliii Ibid., oocv. 



64 PmLQSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

it is real in the world. We cannot split the world into 
two halves of subject and object, for Brahman underlies 
both. While it denies duality, it does not affirm that all 
things could be dissolved into one except in a figurative 
sense. 1 

Other friendly interpreters of the Upaniads also con- 
tend that the Upanisads support the doctrine of m&yft 
in the sense of the illusoriness of the world. Let us inquire 
into the value of their contention. Deussen, who has 
done much to popularise VedJtntic lore in Europe, points 
out that four different theories of creation occur in the 
Upaniads. They are (i) that matter exists from eternity 
independently of God, which He fashions, but does not 
create ; (2) that God creates the universe out of nothing, 

* We find that the passages which employ the illustration of clay 
(copper, etc ) to explain the oneness of Brahman and the world, use 
the words M vacaraxnbhanam vikaro namadheyam mrttikety eva satyam." 
Its meaning seems to be that all are modifications of the one sub- 
stance, marked by different names. &amkara interprets this to mean that 
" the modification (vikara) originates and exists merely in speech ; in 
reality there is no such thing as effect. It is merely a name, and there- 
fore unreal." It is vyavah&nkam or empirical, but it does not follow that 
it is mithya or falsehood. It has also to be noted that the statement is 
made by Uddalaka, who held a theory of matter which admitted only 
changes of form. The material, according to him, is one continuous whole, 
in which qualitatively distinct particles of matter are mixed together The 
passage says that the development is noticed by the giving of a different 
name. Name and form are used in the Upani$ads to indicate individuality. 
See Brh., i, 4. 7. Development of the one into the many is the rise of 
name and form out of the primary principle. There is no suggestion that 
the modifications denoted by name and form are unreal. They have, 
of course, no reality apart from Brahman. Namarftpa is not what the 
English words name and form indicate. They correspond to the form and 
matter of Aristotle. The two together constitute the individuals of the 
world. In Buddhism rQpa stands for the gross body and nama for the 
subtle mind. In the Upanisads the development of name and form means 
the individualisation of the One. The individualisation is the principle of 
creation, the central feature of the cosmic process Things and persons are 
ultimately only modes of the existence of God. They are not real on their 
own account. Only Brahman is so real. Their separateness is superficial. 
Salvation in the Upanisads is the cessation of the sense of separateness of 
n&marupa. The Mungaka Upanisad says: "He who has attained the 
highest wisdom unites with the universal spirit, delivered from namarupa as 
the flowing streams enter into rest in the sea, leaving namarftpa behind." 
Again, the cause is more real than the effect. God is the cause of mil 
persons and tilings. As gold is the essence of gold ornaments, Brataum it 
the realty of the world, its ftattasamauya or common substratum,- 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 65 

and the latter is independent of God, although it is His 
creation; (3) that God creates the universe by trans* 
forming Himself into it ; (4) that God alone is real, and 
there is no creation at all. The last, according to him, is 
the fundamental view of the Upani$ads. The world in 
space and time is an appearance, an illusion, a shadow of 
God. To know God we must reject the world of appear- 
ance. What inclines Deussen to this view is his own belief 
that the essence of every true religion is the repudiation 
of the reality of the world. Having come to that conclusion 
on independent grounds, he is anxious to find support for 
his doctrine in the philosophic systems of ancient India, 
the Upani$ads and Sarhkara, ancient Greece, Parmenides 
and Plato, and modern Germany, Kant and Schopenhauer. 
In his eagerness to find support for his position he is not 
very careful about the facts. He admits that the prevailing 
doctrine of the Upaniads is the pantheistic one, while 
the ^fundamental " doctrine is the illusion hypothesis. 
That the pantheistic view is the " prevailing " one, Deussen 
is obliged to concede by the mere pressure of facts. That 
the illusion view is the " fundamental " one is his own 
reading of the facts. Between the two, the fact of pantheism 
and the reading of illusionism, a compromise has to be effected. 
Deussen achieves it by holding that it is a concession to 
clamour and the empirical demands of the unregenerate 
man. " For the fundamental thought, that is held fast 
at least as a principle at all stages, even at the lowest, which 
maintains the independent existence of matter, is the con- 
viction of the sole reality of the Atman ; only that side by 
side with and in spite of this conviction, more or less far 
reaching concessions were made to the empirical conscious- 
ness of the reality of the universe, that could never be 
entirely cast off." x The first argument urged in support of 
the "illusion" hypothesis is that the Upaniads assert 
the sole reality of Brahman. It follows that the world is 
unreal. We agree that Atman is the sole reality. If we 
know it, all else is known. That there is no plurality, no 
change outside it, is admissible. But that there is no change 
at all and no plurality at all, either in or out, such an un- 

Tk* Philosophy of Jfe Upa*if*4* t pp. i*i-a, 

6 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

qualified proposition is hard to understand* "Nature," 
says Deussen, " which presents the appearance of plurality 
and change is a mere illusion." l In the same strain 
Mr. Eraser argues : " This doctrine of the illusion of all 
appearances of reality follows naturally and logically from 
the repeated teachings in the Upaniads regarding the 
non-duality of the self or Atman or Brahman as the sole 
reality of the universe." * In these arguments the infinite 
is taken in a false sense. It is equated with the not-finite ; 
the eternal is made the not-temporal. When the eternal 
becomes a timeless abstraction, the life of the world in 
time becomes unreal. The opposition between the world 
in space and time and the world absolute and eternal is 
ultimate. But the Upani$ads nowhere say that the infinite 
excludes the finite. Wherever they assert that Brahman 
is the sole reality they are careful enough to add that the 
woUd is rooted in Brahman, and as such has a share of 
reality. " The finite is in the infinite. This Atman is the 
entire universe. "3 It is pra$a. It is speech. It is mind. 
It is everything in the universe. God is present in the 
vile dust and the small mote. 4 The affirmation of the 
real involves the affirmation of all that is based on it. From 
the doctrine of the sole reality of Brahman follows the 
relative reality of what is included in or based on it. 

Deussen urges that " the passages which declare that 
with the knowledge of the Atman all is known, ' deny ' 
the universe of plurality." We do not admit this conten- 
tion. If the Atman is the universal self embracing within 
it all thinking things and the objects of all thought, if 
there is nothing outside it, then it follows that if it is 
known all else is known. The true knowledge which 
leads us to liberation helps us to realise the one indwell- 
ing spirit. There is no suggestion that the Atman 
and the world exclude each other ; in that case what 
Indra said to Prajipati would be true, and Atman 
which excludes everything definite and distinct, would be 

, P. 237. * Indian Thought, p. 68. 3 Chftndogyft, ii. 4. 26. 

Mn*4alc*, ii. 2. n ; Katha, ii. 5. 2 ; Tait , iii. i ; Chan., iii. 14. s. 
Ii. 14. *-4 ; vi. 9. i ; Brh., U. 4. 6 ; iv. 5. 7 ; ii. 5. a ; v. 3, i ; i. 4. 16; 
tt 5. 15 ; iii. 7, 15 ; iv. 4. 33. 



PHTLOSOWSY OF THE UPANISADS $7 

the barest abstraction. If we ignore differences, we reduce 
the absolute to a non-entity. We do not improve the case 
of the absolute by repudiating the relative. The eternal 
need not give away the temporal as null and void. Loyalty 
to the highest experience of man, religious and moral, 
philosophic and aesthetic, requires us to recognise the reality 
of the temporal as rooted in the eternal, of the finite as 
subsisting in the infinite, of man as born from God. To 
deny the contingent and the individual is to falsify the neces- 
sary and the universal. The many passages which declare 
the world to be rooted in Brahman are explained away 
by Deussen as a concession to empirical consciousness. 
The Upaniads would not have seriously put forth doctrines 
about the relativity of the world if it was their view that 
the world was a mere illusion. An unworkable interpre- 
tation is adopted by Deussen, and arbitrary arguments are 
employed to support what is fundamentally unsoftnd. 
Deussen himself, in attempting to give the credit for the 
"illusion" hypothesis to the great German philosopher 
Kant, admits that the hypothesis was not really, or perhaps 
explicitly, held by the Upaniad thinkers. For he writes : 
" There is still always a broad distinction between the one 
Brahman and the multiplicity of his appearances, nor were 
ancient thinkers, or indeed any thinkers before Kant, 
able to rise to the conception that the entire unfolding 
in space and time was a merely subjective phenomenon/' 1 
Deussen correctly suggests that the Upaniads could not 
have held the view of the subjectivity of the world. The 
different theories of creation are enunciated just to point 
out that there is essential dependence between Brahman 

* P. 103. Deussen seems to interpret Kant in the light of the Up*ni9*ds 
and the Upani?ads in the light of Kant, with the result that he has prac- 
tically misconstrued both. Kant is anxious that his idealism should not be 
confused with Berkeleyan subjectivism quite as much as Samkara is anxious 
that his idealism should not be identified with Buddhistic subjectivism. 
Perhaps with Schopenhauer Deussen thinks that Kant's refutation of 
idealism is a stupid after-thought and a great blunder. It is doubtful 
whether students of Kant would agree with Deussen 's view. " The well- 
known argument of Kant also, which bases immortality on the realisation 
of the moral law implanted in us, a result only attainable by an infinite 
process of approximation, tells not for immortality in the usual sense, twt 
for transmigration " (p, 314). 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

and the world. There are passages, we admit, which declare 
that the variegated universe is due to the development of 
name and form from out of the one absolute. These indi- 
cate only that the fundamental essence of all things is the 
one reality, and if we are lost in the name and form world, 
we run the risk of missing the deep-lying essence which 
gives rise to all the variety. This name and form-world 
hides, so to say, the immortal essence. 1 We have to pierce 
behind the veil which surrounds all mortal things. The 
objects in space and time conceal the essence of things. 
The passing semblance of life is in no wise its immortal 
truth. The real being is above these things. He manifests 
himself through the world. The manifestation is at the 
same time a concealment. The more complete is the mani- 
festation, the more is the reality concealed. God hides 
Himself and manifests Himself by drawing a veil over His 
face. The hidden meaning of things is opposed to the 
testimony of the senses. The world, while it manifests His 
glory, conceals His pure absolute nature. The truth, the 
unique substance, the absolute void of phenomena and rid 
of limitations, is covered by the multiplicity and plurality 
of the created universe. The objects of the world, including 
the finite selves, imagine that they are separate and self- 
existent, and seem to be engaged in the work of self-main- 
tenance. They forget that they all spring from an identical 
source, from which they derive sustenance. This belief 
is due to m5ya or delusion. " Each little leaf on a tree 
may very naturally have sufficient consciousness to believe 
that it is an entirely separate being, maintaining itself in 
the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying when 
the winter comes on and there is an end of it. It probably 
does not realise that all the tinft it is being supported by 

* Brh. t i. 6. 3. Amrtaih satyena channam. The ambiguity of the 
word " sat " is responsible for much of the confusion of the Upanisad view 
of reality. Sat in one sense means all that, exists. The world of change 
and growth is " sat " in this sense. Sat also stands for the reality that 
persists in the midst of all change, the immortal or the amrtam. The 
Taittirfya calls the former sat and the latter tyat. Since tyat is opposed to 
the existent sat, it is sometimes called asat or anrtam (Tait., ii. 6). Usually, 
the permanent reality or Brahman is called sat and the world of change 
asat (Chili., vi. 2. i ; iii. 19. i). 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE DPANISADS 69 

the sap which flows from the trunk of the tree, and that 
in its turn it is feeding the tree too that its self is the self 
of the whole tree. If the leaf could really understand itself, 
it would see that its self was deeply, intimately connected, 
practically one with the life of the whole tree/' z Below 
the separate wave crests of consciousness there is the un 
fathomed common depth of life, from which all spirits draw 
the springs of their being. If we look upon the objects as 
separate and self-existent, we erect a screen which shuts 
us fiom the truth. The falsely imagined self -subsistence 
of finite objects clouds the glow of heaven. When we 
penetrate beneath the second causes to the essence of all 
things, the veils fall apart and we see that the principle 
underlying them is the same as that which dwells in us. 
It is this need to go behind second causes to realise the 
truth of the oneness of things that is brought out in the 
dialogue between the father and the son in the Ch&ndogya 
Upaniad (vi. 10 ff.). 

" Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree." " Here 
is one, Sir." " Break it." " It is broken, Sir." " What do you 
see there ? " " These seeds, almost infinitesimal." " Break one of 
them," " It is broken, Sir." " What do you see there ? " " Not 
anything, Sir." 

The father said : " My son, that subtle essence which you do not 
perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists. 
Believe it, my son, That which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists 
has its self. It is the True. It is the self, and thou, O Svetaketu, 
art it." 

The father points out to the son some typical objects of 
nature in succession and exhorts him to realise the philo- 
sophical truth of the unity of life and the continuity of man's 
life with that of the univferse. We cannot easily conceive 
this one reality which is concealed by the many objects. We 
are too worldly, too experienced, too serious about our- 
selves for that realisation. We live on the surface, ding to 
forms, worship appearance. 

Deussen ignores the central truth of the Upaniad 
philosophy when he holds that according to it " the whole 
universe, all children, possessions and wisdom/' must " vanish 

* Edward Carpenter ? Pagan and Ckrit&m Cwds, p. 501. 



70 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 

into the nothingness, which they really are/' * On this 
hypothesis it is necessary to explain away all those passages 
which declare Brahman, the sustainer of the universe, to 
be one with the psychical principle of the individual self, 
on the principle of accommodation. " The same spirit of 
accommodation lies at the basis of the form assumed by 
the doctrine of Brahman as a psychical principle/ 1 * " The 
Upaniads find a peculiar pleasure in identifying the Atman 
as the infinitely small within us with the Atman as the 
infinitely great outside us/ 1 3 When we are in trouble, 
we have no more to bring in God, but only make concession 
to weak human nature. 

" Metaphysical knowledge impugns the existence of any 
reality outside of the Atman, that is the consciousness. The 
empirical view, on the contrary, teaches that a manifold 
universe exists externally. From a combination of these 
antagonistic propositions originated the doctrine that the 
universe is real, and yet the Atman remains the sole reality, 
for the Atman is the universe." 4 It is not easy to under- 
stand how the two propositions are antagonistic and the 
conclusion an irreconcilable compromise. When it is said 
that there is no reality outside Atman, it is meant that the 
Atman is the universal spirit or consciousness, including all 
else. When it is said that " a manifold universe exists 
external to us," the " us " refers to the empirical individuals 
who are limited by mind and body, possessing local habi- 
tations and temporal settings. Surely to such beings the 
world is real, being set over against them. The Atman we 
are in search of is not the object of knowledge but the 
basis of all knowledge. It is the presupposition of material 
and spiritual worlds alike. The thinking beings or jfvas, 
the psychological selves, are part of the world of nature. 
In that world they externally act on other beings and are 
acted on by them. But logically Atman is the condition 
of there being a world of related objects at all. All existence 
is existence for self. The world is beyond us as psycho- 
logical selves. It is there within the universal self. The 
conclusion states, the universe is real to us, for we are not 
yet perfect selves. Atman is the sole reality, and it includes 

p. 168. P. 171. : P. *&. 4 P. 405. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 71 

the universe also* Any other position would be illogical. 
As empirical selves we are opposed by the world, limited 
by the objects. As our life, which is first opposed to matter, 
gradually absorbs and remoulds into itself the mechanical 
side of things, even so the subject has to transfigure the 
object. Then what was at the start external and objective 
becomes only a condition of the subject's activity. This 
process goes on steadily till the subject completely dominates 
the object and becomes all in all. Then there would be 
no obstacle outside the subject, but till then the goal is 
not reached. The annulling of the opposition is the sign 
of spirit's growth. The conclusion that the world is a mere 
appearance would follow if the individual subject, this 
particular link in the chain of evolution, bound by space 
and time, be looked upon as the absolute reality. If we, 
as we are, were Brahman, if we were the sole reality, then 
the world opposed to us would be a mere magic show. 
But the self asserted to be the sole reality is the perfect 
self, which we have yet to become. To that perfect self, 
which includes all that is within and without us, there is 
nothing opposed. It is a confusion between the finite self 
of man, with all its discord and contradiction, and the 
ultimate self of Brahman, that suggests to Deussen an 
imaginary antagonism which he tries to overcome by an 
artificial device. * 

There are some passages which say that we ought not 
to see plurality (nana) in Brahman. 1 These passages try 
to indicate the oneness of the world. The emphasis is on 
the one infinite and not the many finites. In our waking 
life we imagine the opposition between the subject and 
the object to be real. Sober reflection tells us that the 
opposition is not ultimate. Duality of subject and object 
is not the ultimate truth. When it is said that duality is 
not all, that duality is not final, it does not mean that 
there is no duality at all, that there is no distinction or 
variety. It is this false view of one school of Buddhism 
that Sarhkara protests against. So long as we imagine 
the world to be due to something else than the absolute 
we are lost. It is the existence of a factor separate from 

* See Bfh., iv. 4. 19. 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 

Atman that the Upaniads protest against. Arguing from 
the similes of salt and water, fire and sparks, spider 'and 
threads, flute and sound, employed by the Upaxd$ads 
to represent the relation of Brahman to the world, Olden- 
berg says : " We can detect behind these similitudes by 
which men strove to bring the living power of the Atman 
in the universe near to their understanding, a conviction, 
though at the same time but a half-conscious conviction, 
of the existence of an element in things separate from 
the Atman. The Atman, says the Indian, pervades the 
universe, as the salt the water in which it has dissolved, 
but we may easily go on to add, as a complement to this, 
that although no drop of the salt water is without salt, 
the water continues, notwithstanding, to be something 
separately constituted from the salt. And thus we may 
infer the Atman is to the Indian certainly the sole actuality, 
light diffusing, the only significant reality in things, but 
there is a remainder left in things which he is not/' It is 
against such a view that the repudiations of dualism are 
intended. The Upaniads make it clear that they do not 
mean to make the world of creation stand separate from 
the Atman. They seem to be clamourously insisting on 
the adequacy of the Atman to all experience. Unlike 
abstract idealism, the Upaniad doctrine is distinguished 
by its resolute devotedness to fact. Its highest principle 
or God is the eternal spirit, 1 which transcends and includes 
the objective world * and the subjective man.s In the 
highest state there is only one Brahman. " We see nothing 
else, hear nothing else, know nothing else/' 4 In the supreme 
illumination of the souls we feel the oneness of subject 
and object, the relativity of the world, the non-ultimate 
nature of the oppositions. " There is neither day nor night 
remaining any more, no existence, no non-existenceonly 
God alone." St. Paul says : " When that which is perfect 
is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.' 9 
Similarly Ruysbroeck: "The fourth mode is a state of 
emptiness made one with God in bare love and in divine 

* Adhidaivam. Adhibhdtam. 

/ i Adhyitmam. See Tait., i. 7. 4 Chin,, vii. 33. 

% AtmaboddhipraldWa. gvetttvatarft, tv. 18. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 7ft 

light. . . . So that a man forgetteth himself and knoweth 
neither himself nor God, nor any creature, nor aught else 
but love alone/' It is this integral oneness of intuitive 
experience that is indicated by all those passages which 
ask us to see no distinction in the highest. 

We admit that according to the Upaniads, plurality, 
succession in time, co-existence in space, relations of cause 
and effect, oppositions of subject and object, are not the 
highest reality. But this is not saying that they are unreal. 
The Upaniads support the doctrine of maya only in the 
sense that there is an underlying reality containing all 
elements from the personal God to the telegraph post. 
Samkara says : " That Atman is in the hearts of all living 
creatures, from Brahma to a post." The different grades 
of individuality are all broken lights of the one absolute. 
Maya represents at the conceptual level the self-distinction 
residing in the very heart of reality, propelling it to develop 
itself. The particular things are and are not. They have 
an intermediate existence. Measured by the perfection of 
the absolute, the unlimited fullness of the one reality, the 
world of plurality, with all its pain and disruption, is less 
real. Compared with the ideal of the supreme one, it is 
wanting in reality. Even if we look upon the persons and 
things of the world as shadows of a substance, still, so long 
^s the substance is real, the shadows also have reality. 
Though the things of the world are imperfect representations 
of the real, they are not illusory semblances of it. The 
oppositions and conflicts which are in the foreground are 
relative modes of the absolute unity, which is in the back- 
ground. Duality and manyness are not the reality. 1 

The unreflecting consciousness hastily assumes that the 
finite world is absolutely real. This is not so. The forms 
and energies of the world are not final and ultimate. They 
themselves need explanation. They are not self-originated 
or self-maintained. There is something behind and beyond 
them. We must sink the universe in God, the finite in 
the infinite, the real of uncritical perception in the Brahman 
of intuition. There is no suggestion in the Upaniad3 

< That is why the word " iva " is used in some of the Upani$ads. See 
., ii. 4. J4 ; iv. 3. 7 ; iv. 4. 19. 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

that the objects which lie around us on every side in infinite 
space, to which by virtue of our bodily frames we all belong, 
are only apparitions. 

There has been much criticism of the theory of the 
Upani$ads under the false impression that it supports 
the illusory nature of the world. It is contended that 
progress is unreal because progress is change, and change 
is unreal since time in which change occurs is unreal. But 
the whole charge is due to a misconception. It is true that 
the absolute is not in time, while time is in the absolute. 
Within the absolute we have real growth, creative evolution. 
The temporal process is an actual process, for reality mani- 
fests itself in and through and by means of the temporal 
changes. If we seek the real in some eternal and timeless 
void, we do not find it. All that the Upaniads urge is 
that the process of time finds its basis and significance in 
an absolute which is essentially timeless. For real progress 
this conception of the absolute is necessary. Without this 
all-comprehending absolute we cannot be certain that the 
flux of the universe is an evolution, that change is progress, 
and that the end of the world is the triumph of the 
good. The absolute guarantees that the process of the 
world is not chaotic but ordered ; that the development 
is not haphazard or the result of charge variations. Reality 
is not a series of disconnected states. Were it so, were 
there not an absolute, we should be landed in an endless 
process, which would have no plan or purpose underlying it. 
The unity of the absolute functions throughout the process 
of the evolution of the world. We are not impotently 
struggling to realise something which is not yet and can 
never be. In a sense the real is expressed at every moment 
of its history. Being and becoming, that which is and that 
which is to be, are identical. With such a view, the teaching 
of the Upaniads is in essential harmony. They do not 
support the doctrine of the world illusion, Hopkins says : 
" Is there anything in the early Upaniads to show that 
the authors believed in the objective world being an illu- 
sion ? Nothing at all." i 

* J.4.O.S., xxiL, p. 385. Sir R. G. Bhandafkar holds that " the opinion 
expressed by tome eminent scholars that the burden o! the Upanisad 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANBADS 75 



XII 

DEGREES OF REALITY 

So far as the absolute is concerned, there are no degrees 
at all. The conception of degrees has meaning only for 
the finite intelligence which distinguishes things. It has 
no ultimate value. When the manyness of the world is 
taken over into the one, the conception of degrees is trans- 
cended. In the metaphysical reality of the Upanigads 
we have no scale of reals. Yet it has significance in the 
world of experience. All progress in the world involves it. 
Any demand for advance and alteration in existence pre- 
supposes it. The approximation to the character of the 
real in the relative world of things is the test of the more 
or less of reality. We know enough of the ultimate to make 
use of it in this world. This view of the Upaniads is 
defended by SSamkara. In reply to the dilemma, Is Brahman 
known or is it not known ?, if known, we need not inquire 
into its nature ; if not known, it will not be worth our while 
to inquire, Samkara says that reality as self is indubitably 
known. It posits itself in such sayings as " I question," 
or " I doubt." That something is real is a self-evident truth, 
and it is its nature that we have to understand. This reality 
which we realise serves as the criterion to distinguish degrees 
in existence. The theory of the world illusion is inconsistent 
with the conception of degrees of reality. The Upani$ads 
give us a hierarchy of different grades of reality down from 
the all-embracing absolute, which is the primary source 
as well as the final consummation of the world process. 
The different kinds of being are higher and lower manifesta- 
tions of the one absolute spirit. For nothing on earth 
stands alone, however relatively complete and self-subsisting 
it may appear. Every finite object holds within itself 
distinctions which point beyond. While the absolute is 
in all finite things and permeates them, the things differ 

teaching is the illusive character of the world and the reality of one soul 
only is manifestly wrong, and I may even say^ is indicative of an uncritical 
judgment " (Vaiw<tvism> p. a, /.*.). 



76 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

in the degree of their permeability, in the fullness of the 
reflections they give forth. 

Not all parts like, but all alike informed 
With radiant light. . . . 

There is a richer revelation of reality in organised life than 
in brute matter, more in human society than in organised 
life. The rank of the categories as higher and lower is 
determined by the adequacy of their expression of reality. 
Life is a higher category than matter. Self-conscious 
thought is more concrete than mere consciousness. " He 
who knows the gradual development of the self in hiiq 
obtains himself more development. There are herbs and 
trees and all that is animal, and he knows the self gradu- 
ally developing in them. For in herbs and trees sap only 
is seen, but citta or consciousness in animated being. 
Among animated beings, again, the self develops gradually, 
for in some sap is seen (as well as consciousness), but in 
others consciousness is not seen, and in man, again, the self 
develops gradually, for he is most endowed with knowledge. 
He says what he has known, he sees what he has known. 
He knows what is to happen to-morrow, he knows the 
visible and the invisible worlds. By means of the mortal 
he desires the immortal thus is he endowed. With regard 
to other animals, hunger and thirst are a kind of under- 
standing. But they do not say what they have known, 
nor do they see what they have known. They do not 
know what is to happen to-morrow, nor the visible and the 
invisible worlds. They go so far and no farther/' l 
We see that though the same reality is seen " in the star, 
in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod/' 
still it is seen more fully in living beings than in dead 
matter, in developing man than in the satisfied beast, in 
the spiritual life than in the intellectual. 9 In this process 

1 Aitareya Aragyaka, ii. 3. 1-5. 

The Aitareya Upanisad alludes to the fourfold clarification of jfvas 
into those born of uterus, jar&ynja, like men and the higher animals; those 
born of egg, a$4aja, like crows and ducks; those born of moisture, svedaja, 
like worms and insects ; and those born of earth, udbhijja, like plants (iii. 3). 
The classification proceeds on the mode of Appearance of the different beings 
cm earth. See also Manu, i. 43-46. Aristotle speaks of vegetable, animal 
and human souls, Leibaig classifies living beings into plants, animals and man. 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANIADS 77 

of self-realisation or self-fulfilment the lowest is the earth* 
The Upaniad thinkers have advanced on the Vedic con- 
ception of a single element-water. Sometimes three ele- 
ments of fire, water and earth are admitted. 1 The five 
elements of ether, air, fire, water and earth, are distinguished. 
" From that self (Brahman) sprang forth ether (ka) ; 
from ether air, from air fire, from fire water, from water 
earth. From earth herbs, from herbs food, from food seed, 
from seed man. Man thus consists of the essence of food." * 
In discussing the physical basis of life the author gives an 
account of the evolution of matter. The higher possesses 
the properties of the lower. Ether comes first, with the 
single property of sound. It is that through which we 
hear. From ether we proceed to air, which has the property 
of ether, and in addition that of tangibility. It is that 
through which we hear and see. From air comes fire. It 
is that by which we hear, feel and see. From fire we get 
to water. We can taste it also. From water comes earth, 
that by which we hear, feel, see, taste and smell. Though 
the science presupposed might appear to be fanciful at 
the present day, still there was a principle involved in the 
account. It is in the Upaniads that we have for the 
first time the doctrine of the five elements. The distinction 
of the elemental essence or the tanmatra and the gross 
embodiment or substance is suggested. 3 The Chandogya 
Upaniad sometimes suggests that the things of the world 
are qualitatively distinct from one another, and may be 
divided into infinite parts. Uddalaka propounds the theory 
that matter is infinitely divisible and qualitatively distinct. 
There is no such thing as the transformation of things into 
one another. When we get butter from churning curds, 
curds do not get transformed into butter, but the particles 
of butter are already in the curds, and the process of churning 
enables them to rise up wards. 4 The position of 

i By the combination of these three, all other 
Chftndogya Up., vi. 2^3-4, Possibly this view is the 
doctrine of tanm&tras or subtle essences, giving rise 
See also Prasna Up., iv. 8. 

Tail, li. i. 

i See Pra*na iv. 8 ; Aitareya, ii. 3 ; Katha, 

Chin., vi. 6. i. 




78 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

that different kinds of matter interpenetrate each other, 
is similar to this : " If then an empirical fact, such as the 
assimilation of nutriment, appears to show us the conver- 
sion (say) of corn into flesh and bone, we must interpret 
this as meaning that the corn contains in itself, in such 
minute quantities as to be imperceptible, just that into 
which it is transformed. It veritably consists of particles 
of flesh and blood, and marrow and bone." x The atomic 
theory of Kanada is also suggested in the view that the 
particles only combine and separate. Matter is represented 
as a chaotic mass, like the juices of various trees blended 
together in honey.* It is not impossible to see in this the 
germs of the Simkhya theory. The development of matter 
is accounted for by either the entry of the jivitman into 
matter or the animation of matter by spirit in varying 
degrees. Sometimes the principle of motion is located 
within matter itself. Prana or life, though it arises out of 
matter, is not fully explicable by . matter. Similarly, con- 
sciousness, though it arises from life, is not intelligible on 
the hypothesis of prana or vitalism. When we get to man 
we have sell-conscious thought. Man is higher than stones 
and stars, beasts and birds, since he can enter into the 
fellowship of reason and will, affection and conscience, 
yet he is not the highest, since he feels the pain of contra- 
diction. 

Before we pass from this section let us consider whether 
the Upaniad doctrine is rightly regarded as pantheistic. 
Pantheism is the view which identifies God with the sum 
of things and denies transcendence. If the nature of the 
absolute is exhausted completely by the course of the 
world, if the two become one, then we have pantheism. 
In the Upaniads we come across passages which declare 
that the nature of reality is not exhausted by the world 
process. The existence of the world does not take away 
from the perfection of the absolute. In a beautiful image 
it is said : "That is full and this is full. From that full 
rises this full. Taking away this full from that, what re- 
mains is yet full/ 1 Even God in transforming Himself into 

**Adamson: The Development of Greek Philotophy, p. 50. 
Chin,, vi. 9. j-3. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE TJPANISADS 7 

the world has forfeited nothing of His nature. As early 
as the Rg-Veda it is said that all beings are only a fourth 
of the Purua, while the three other fourths remain im- 
mortal in the shining regions. 1 According to the Bfhad 
Sranyaka (v. 14), one foot of Brahman consists of the 
three worlds, the second of the triple knowledge of the 
Veda, the third of the three vital breaths, while the fourth, 
exalted above the dust of earth, shines as the sun.* The 
Upani$ads declare that the universe is in God. But they 
never hold that the universe is God. God is greater than 
the universe, which is His work. He is as much and more 
beyond this, as the human personality is beyond the body, 
which is the instrument of its life here. They refuse to 
imprison God in the world. From this it does not follow 
that God is the external Creator existing separate from the 
world. God expresses Himself in the world, and the world 
is the expression of His life. God in the infinite fullness of 
His being transcends His actual manifestations in the 
universe of finite, physical and psychical entities which 
He has called into existence. God is transcendent as well 
as immanent. The Upaniads are not pantheistic in the 
bad sense of the term. Things are not thrown together 
into a heap called God, without unity, purpose or distinc- 
tion of values. The philosophy of the Upaniads revolts 
against the deistic conception of God. It does not say 
that God is outside the world, and now and again makes 
His presence felt by supernatural revelation or miraculous 
interference. It is pantheism, if it is pantheism to say 
that God is the fundamental reality of our lives, and we 
cannot live without Him. Everything on earth is finite 
and infinite, perfect and imperfect. Everything seeks a 
good beyond itself, tries to rid itself of its finiteness and 
become perfect. The finite seeks self-transcendence. This 
clearly establishes that the Infinite Spirit is working in the 
finite. The real is the basis of the unreal. If the doctrine 
of the indwelling of the divine is enough justification for 
condemning a system as pantheism, the philosophy of the 
Upaniads is a pantheism. But pantheism in this sense 
is an essential feature of all true religion. 

1 x. 90. 3 See also Cfaftndogya Up., iii. xa. 6. iv. 3. 32, 



80 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 

XIV 

THE INDIVIDUAL SELF 

The Upaniads make out that of finite objects the 
individual self has the highest reality. It comes nearest 
to the nature of the absolute, though it is not the absolute 
itself. There are passages where the finite self is looked 
upon as a reflection of the universe. The whole world is 
the process of the finite striving to become infinite, and this 
tension is found in the individual self. According to the 
Taittiriya the several elements of the cosmos are found in 
the nature of the individual. In the Chindogya Upani$ad 
(vi. ix. 3 and 4) fire, water and earth are said to constitute 
the jivatman or the individual soul, together with the prin- 
ciple of the infinite. 1 

Man is the meeting-point of the various stages of reality. 
Prana corresponds to V5yu, the breath of the body to the 
wind of the world, manas to aka&a, the mind of man to the 
ether of the universe, the gross body to the physical elements. 
The human soul has affinities with every grade of existence 
from top to bottom. There is in it the divine element 
which we call the beatific consciousness, the ananda state, 
by which at rare moments it enters into immediate relations 
with the absolute. The finite self or the embodied soul 
is the Atman coupled with the senses and mind. 1 

The different elements are in unstable harmony. " Two 

1 Since God collected and resumed in man 
The firmaments, the strata and the lights, 
Fish, fowl, and beast and insect 
Of various life caught back upon His arm all their trains, 
Reorganised and constituted man, 
The microcosm, the adding up of works. 

BROWNING. 

See also Aitareya, iii. 3 ; &vetttvatara, ii. 12. 6 ; Prafaa, vi. xz. The 
individual subject is the world in miniature, and the world is the individual 
writ large. Plato in his Timaus institutes an analogy between the macro- 
cosm and the microcosm, the universe and man. The soul of the world is 
said to be compounded by God Himself out of the changeless and the change- 
ful and inserted in the midst of the universe (34. B). The universe, according 
to him, is a magnified man. See Tait., i. 3, and Anandaghi's com- 
mentary on it. 

Chlfi., via. 12. 3. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 81 

birds, akin and friends, cling to the self-same tree. One 
of them eats the sweet berry, but the other gazes upon 
him without eating. In the same tree the world tree 
man dwells along with God. With troubles overwhelmed, 
he faints and grieves at his own helplessness. But when 
he sees the other, the Lord in whom he delights ah, what 
glory is his, his troubles pass away/' x The natural and 
the divine have not as yet attained a stable harmony. 
The being of the individual is a continual becoming, a 
striving after that which it is not. The infinite in man 
summons the individual to bring about a unity out of the 
multiplicity with which he is confronted. This tension 
between the finite and the infinite which is present through- 
out the world-process comes to a head in the human con- 
sciousness. In every aspect of his life, intellectual, emo- 
tional and moral, this struggle is felt. He can gain admission 
into the kingdom of God, where the eternal verities of 
absolute love and absolute freedom dwell only by sinking 
his individuality and transforming the whole of the finite- 
ness into infiniteness, humanity into divinity. But as finite 
and human, he cannot reach the fruition or attain the final 
achievement. The being in which the struggle is witnessed 
points beyond itself, and so man has to be surpassed. The 
finite self is not a self-subsisting reality. Be he so, then 
God becomes only another independent individual, limited 
by the finite self. The reality of the self is the infinite ; the 
unreality which is to be got rid of is the finite. The 
finite individual loses whatever reality he possesses if the 
indwelling spirit is removed. It is the presence of the 
infinite that confers dignity on the self of man. The indi- 
vidual self derives its being and draws its sustenance from 
the universal life. Sub specie aternitaiis, the self is perfect. 3 
There is a psychological side on which the selves repel each 
other and exclude one another. From this apparent fact 
of cxclusiveness we should not infer real isolation of selves. 
The exclusiveness is the appearance of distinction. It 
ought to be referred to the identity, otherwise it becomes 
a mere abstraction of our -minds. The hypothesis of ex- 

* Mrtaka, lii. I. a. See R.V., i. 164. s*. 
See Saihkara ; Introduction to V.S. 



82 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 

elusive selves leaves no room for the ideals of truth, goodness 
and love. These presuppose that man is not perfect as 
he is, that there is something higher than the actual self 
which he has to attain to secure peace of mind. "And 
the independent reality of the individual, when we examine 
it, is in truth mere illusion. Apart from the community, 
what are separate men ? It is the common mind within 
him which gives reality to the human being, and taken 
by himself, whatever else he is, he is not human. ... If 
this is true of the social consciousness in its various forms, 
it is true certainly no less of that common mind which * is 
more than social. The finite minds that in and for religion 
form one spiritual whole have indeed in the end no visible 
embodiment, and yet, except as members in an invisible 
community, they are nothing real. For religion, in short, 
if the one indwelling spirit is removed, there are no spirits 
left." * 

Though the individual soul - fighting with the lower 
nature is the highest in the world, it is not the highest 
realisable. The striving discordant soul of man should 
attain to the freedom of spirit, the delight of harmony 
and the joy of the absolute. Only when the God in him 
realises itself, only when the ideal reaches its fruition is 
the destiny of man fulfilled. The struggles, the contra- 
dictions and the paradoxes of life are the signs of imperfect 
evolution, while the harmony, the delight and the peace, 
mark the perfection of the process of evolution. The in- 
dividual is the battlefield in which the fight occurs. The 
battle must be over and the pain of contradiction trans- 
cended for the ideal to be realised. The tendency to God 
which begins in completed man will become then a perfect 
fruition. Man is higher than all other aspects of the uni- 
verse, and his destiny is realised when he becomes one 
with the infinite. Nature has life concealed in it, and 
when life develops, nature's destiny is fulfilled. Life has 
consciousness concealed in it, and when it liberates con- 
sciousness, its end is reached. The destiny of consciousness 
is fulfilled when intellect becomes manifest. But the truth 
of the intellect is reached when it is absorbed in the higher 

* Bradley : Truth and Rtality, p. 435. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 88 

intuition, which is neither thought nor will nor feeling, 
but yet the goal of thought, the end of will and the per- 
fection of feeling. When the finite self attains the supreme, 
the godhead from which it descended, the end of spiritual 
life is reached. " When to a man who understands, the 
self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble, can 
there be to him, who has once beheld that unity ? " 



XV 

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANISADS 

In estimating the value of the ethics of the Upaniads 
we have to consider the logical implications of the ideal 
set forth, and develop the suggestions made in the texts. 
From our previous discussion, it is obvious that the Upani- 
ads have for their ideal the becoming one with God. 
The world is not for itself. It issues from God, and must 
therefore seek its rest in God. Throughout the process of 
the world we witness this infinitisation of the finite. Like 
the rest of the world, man, feeling the pressure of the infinite 
in him, reaches out his hands to clasp the highest. "All 
birds go towards the tree intended for their abode, so all 
this goes to the supreme self." l " May I enter Thee, such 
as Thou art, O, Lord ; may Thou, O Lord, enter me. . . . 
May I become well cleansed, Lord." * " Thou art my 
resting-place." 3 The realisation of the oneness with God 
is the ideal cf man. The difference between human con- 
sciousness and all else is that while all seek the infinite, 
man alone has an idea of the end. After ages of develop- 
ment man has become conscious of the great scheme of 
the universe. He alone feels the summons of the infinite, 
and consciously grows towards the heavenly stature awaiting 
him. The absolute is the deliberate goal of the finite self. 

That it is the highest perfection, the most desirable ideal, 
is brought out in many ways. It is a state " far above 
hunger and thirst, above sorrow and confusion, above old 
age and death." "As the sun, the eye of the universe, 

' PraSna, iv. 7. Tait, i. 4. 

s Tait., i. 4; see Bfh. ( iv. 3. 32. 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

remains far off and unaffected by all sickness that meets 
the eye, so also the One, the Atman, who dwells in all 
creatures, dwells afar and untouched by the sorrows of 
the world/ 9 To live in the world of plurality, staking all 
on the small self, subject to disease and suffering, is indeed 
a misfortune. The undoing of the causes which lead to 
finite existence is the proper aim of man. A return from 
the plurality into the One is the ideal goal, the most ultimate 
value. It gives satisfaction to the whole being of man. 
It is, according to the Taittiriya Upaniad, " Pranaramam 
mana-anandam, &&ntisamfddham amrtaxn," " the delight 
of life and mind, the fullness of peace and eternity." Lower 
goals which we crave after may satisfy the vital organism 
or the mental desires, but this includes them and transcends 
them. We have different kinds of pleasures answering to 
the different levels of our existence, the vital pleasure, 
the sensuous, the mental and the intellectual, but the 
highest is inanda. 

Whatever ethics we have in the Upani$ads is subsidiary 
to this goal. Duty is a means to the end of the highest 
perfection. Nothing can be satisfying short of this highest 
condition. Morality is valuable only as leading to it. It 
is the expression of the spiritual impulse to perfection 
implanted in the heart of man, the instinct of the individual 
soul. It is obedience to the Eternal Reality which constrains 
our conscious self. This is the meaning of the expression 
that duty is " the stern daughter of the voice of God/' 
The perfect ideal of our life is found only in the Eternal 
Reality. The law of morality is an invitation to become 
perfect, " even as your heavenly Father is perfect/' 

Before we take up the discussion of the ethical life, we may 
consider the objections urged generally against the possi- 
bility of ethics in the philosophical system of the Upaniads. 
If all is one, it is asked, how can we have moral relations ? 
If the absolute is perfection, where is there any need for 
the effort to realise what is already accomplished ? But 
monism does not mean an obliteration of the distinction of 
good and evil. The sense of otherness and multiplicity 
essential to ethical life is allowed for by the Upani$ads. 
They point out that there is no meaning in asking us to 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 85 

love our neighbour or achieve the unity of the world in 
love, if exclusiveness and difference are fundamental in the 
lives of men. If men were really external to each other, 
as the Leibnizean monads, without the corrective of the 
pre-established harmony, then the ethical ideal is impossible 
of realisation. If we are called upon to love our neighbour, 
it is because all are one in reality. My neighbour and 
myself are one in our inmost self, if the superficial and 
ephemeral distinctions are transcended. The true self, 
absolutely and eternally valid, is beyond the fluctuating 
particulars of time and space and all that finds its place 
in them. It is no mere empty phrase to be told to transcend 
our exclusiveness. Moka literally means release, release 
from the bondage to the sensuous and the individual, the 
narrow and the finite. It is the result of self-enlargement 
and freedom. To live in perfect goodness is to realise one's 
life in all. This ideal for which the moral nature of man 
cries can be attained only if the finite self transcends its 
narrow individuality and identifies itself with the whole. 
The path of deliverance is the path of soul growth. The 
reality in which we are to abide by transcending our in- 
dividuality is the highest, and that is the reality asserted 
by the Upaniads. 

It is urged that there is no room for any ethical en- 
deavour on the hypothesis that man is divine in nature. 
Simply because it is said that God is in man, it does not. 
follow that with it there is an end of all endeavour. God is 
not in man in such an obvious fashion that he can possess 
Him absentmindedly and without effort or struggle. God is 
present as a potentia or a possibility. It is man's duty 
to lay hold of Him by force and action. If he does not 
do it, he fails in his duty as man. The God in man is a 
task as well as a fact, a problem as well as a possession. 
Man in his ignorance identifies himself with the external 
wrappings, the physical and mental envelopments. Desire 
for the absolute conflicts with his finitude or his limitation. 
49 Though the individual is lit with the divine spark, he is 
not wholly divine. His divinity is not an actuality, but 
a part of God aspiring to be the whole. As he is, he is dust 
and deity, God and brute crossed. It is the task of th* 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

moral life to eliminate the non-divine element, not by des- 
troying it, but by suffusing it with the divine spirit" 
Man is a contradiction between the finite heritage of nature 
and the infinite ideals of spirit, and by a gradual submission 
of the chaotic principles of nature to the divine spirit he 
has to work up to his destiny. It is his aim to break the 
shell of his own little being and blend in love and perfect 
union with the divine principle. The problem of morality 
has a significance for man whose life is a struggle or a war- 
fare between the finite and the infinite, the demoniac and 
the divine elements. Man is born for the struggle, and 
does not find his self until he feels the opposition. 

From the references in the Upani^ads to the different 
ways of attaining the highest, Rathitara's truth, Pauruiti's 
austerity and Maudgalya's learning,* it is clear that the 
thinkers^ of the period reflected a good deal on the problems 
of ethics. Without attempting to elaborate the views 
of tlie different thinkers, we may describe certain general 
propositions accepted by them all. 

The ideal of ethics is self-realisation. Moral conduct is 
self-realised conduct, if by the self we mean not the empirical 
self, with all its weakness and vulgarity, selfishness and 
smallness, but the deeper nature of man, free from all fetters 
of selfish individuality. The lusts and passions of the 
animal self, the desires and ambitions of egoism, restrict 
the vital energies to the plane of the lower self and contract 
the life of the soul, and they are to be held in check. For the 
growth of the soul, or the realisation of the highest, the 
obstacles and influences must be subdued. The moral 
life is one of understanding and reason, and not of mere 
sense and instinct. " Know the self or Atman as the Lord 
who sits in the chariot called the body, buddhi or intelli- 
gence is the charioteer, mind is the reins, the senses are 
the horses, and the objects are the roads. The self, the 
senses and the mind combined, the intelligent call the 
enjoyer. But he who has no understanding, but is weak 
in mind, his senses run riot like the vicious horses of a 
charioteer. He who has understanding, and is strong. 

International Journal of Ethic$> 19x4, p. 169. 
Tait., i. 9. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 87 

minded, his senses are well controlled, like the good horses 
of a charioteer. He who is without understanding, who 
is thoughtless and impure, never reaches the immortal, 
immaterial state, but enters into the round of birth. But 
he who has understanding, and he who is thoughtful and 
pure, reaches the state from which there is no return/ 1 K 
The drive of desire has to be checked. When desire seizes 
the helm the soul suffers shipwreck, since it is not the law 
of man's being. If we do not recognise the ideal prescribed 
by reason, and do not accept a higher moral law, our life 
will be one of animal existence, without end or aim, where 
we are randomly busy, loving and hating, caressing and 
killing without purpose or reason. The presence of reason 
reminds us of something higher than mere nature, and re- 
quires us to transform our natural existence into a human 
one, with meaning and purpose. If, in spite of indications 
to the contrary, we make pleasure the end of our pursuits, 
our life is one of moral evil, unworthy of man. " Man is 
not in the least elevated above mere animalism by the 
possession of reason, if his reason is only employed in the 
same fashion as that in which animals use their instincts." * 
Only the wicked make gods of the things of the world and 
worship them. " Now Virocana, satisfied in his thought, 
went to the asuras and preached to them the doctrine that 
the bodily self alone is to be worshipped, that it alone is 
to be served, and he who worships body and serves it gains 
both worlds this and the next. Therefore they call even 
now a man who does not give alms here, who has not faith, 
and offers no sacrifices, an asura, for this is the doctrine 
of the asuras." 3 Our life, when thus guided, will be at 
the mercy of vain hopes and fears. " The rational life 
will be marked by unity and consistency. The different 
parts of human life will be in order and make manifest 
the one supreme ideal. If, instead of reason, our senses 
guide us, our life will be a mirror of passing passions and 
temporary inclinations. He who leads such a life will have 
to be written down, like Dogberry, an ass. His life, which 

1 Katha Upani?ad. 

* Kftnt : Critique of Pure Reason. 

i Ch&ndogya, via. 8. 4-5. 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISAIXS 

will be a series of disconnected and scattered episodes, 
will have no purpose to take, no work to carry out, no end 
to realise. In a rational life, every course of action, before 
it is adopted, is brought before the bar of reason, and its 
capacity to serve the highest end is tested, and if found 
suitable adopted by the individual/ 9 1 

A life of reason is a life of unselfish devotion to the 
world. Reason tells us that the individual has no interests 
of his own apart from the whole, of which he is a part. 
He will be delivered from the bondage to fortune and 
caprice only if he gives up his ideas of separate sensuous 
existence. He is a good man who in his life subordinates 
personal to social ends, and he is a bad man who does the 
opposite. The soul in committing a selfish deed imposes 
fetters on itself, which can be broken only by the reassertion 
of the life universal. This way of sympathy is open to 
all and leads to the expansion of the soul. If we want 
to escape from sin, we must escape from selfishness. We 
must put down the vain conceits and foolish lies about 
the supremacy of the small self. Each of us conceives 
himself to be an exclusive unit, an ego sharply marked off 
from whatever lies outside his physical body and mental 
history. From this egoism springs all that is morally bad. 
We should realise in our life and conduct that all things 
are in God and of God. The man who knows this truth 
will long to lose his life, will hate all selfish goods and sell 
all that he has, would wish even to be despised and rejected 
of the world, if so he can come into accord with the universal 
life of God. In one sense the Upani$ad morality is in- 
dividualistic, for its aim is self -realisation ; but " individual- 
istic" ceases here to have any exclusive meaning. To 
realise oneself is to identify oneself with a good that is not 
his alone. Moral life is a God-centred life, a life of passionate 
love and enthusiasm for humanity, of seeking the infinite 
through the finite, and not a mere selfish adventure for 
small ends.* 

Finite objects cannot give us the satisfaction for which 
our soid hungers. As in the field of intellect we miss the 
ultimate reality in the objects of the empirical world, even 

Intimation*! Journal of Etkici, 1914, pp. 171-2. lift Upftnip*, i. 



i 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 89 

do the absolute good we seek for in morality is not to be 
found in finite satisfactions. "The infinite is bliss, there 
is no bliss in things finite/ 1 * Yajfiavalkya, leaving for 
the forest, proposed to divide his property between his 
two wives, Maitreyi and K5ty2Lyani. Maitreyi did not 
know what to do ; sitting among her household possessions, 
rather sadly she was looking outwards towards the forest. 
That day she administered a rebuke to the petty man who 
pursues worthless aims in such breathless haste. Finite 
things produce the opposite of what we aim at through 
them. The spirit in us craves for true satisfaction, and 
nothing less than the infinite can give us that. We seek 
finite objects, we get them, but there is no satisfaction 
in them. We may conquer the whole world, and yet we 
sigh that there are no more worlds to conquer. " What- 
ever he reaches he wishes to go beyond. If he reaches the 
sky, he wishes to go beyond." Most of us are on " the 
road that leads to wealth in which many men perish." 3 
By becoming slaves to things, by swathing ourselves in 
external possessions, we miss the true self. " No man 
can be made happy by wealth." " The hereafter never 
rises before the eyes of the careless youth, befooled by the 
delusion of wealth. ' This is the world/ he thinks ; ' there 
is no other/ Thus he falls again and again into the 
power of death/' " Wise men, knowing the nature of what 
is immortal, do not look for anything stable here among 
things unstable." 5 Man is in anguish when he is separated 
from God, and nothing else than union with God can satisfy 
his heart's hunger. 6 The unbounded aspirations of the 
soul for the ideally beautiful, the specklessly pure, are not 
answered by the objects limited in space, time and the 
shackles of sense. Many men there are who wish to realise 
the ideal of an absolutely worthy existence in love of another 
being. So long as that being is another human self, localised 
in space and time, the ideal is never attained. It is self- 
deception to seek the fullness of love and beauty in another 

* Chin., vii. i. 24. Aitareya Anupyaka, ii. 3. 3. i. 

i Katha, ii. 2-3. 4 Katha, i. a. 6. * Katha, ii. 4- a. 

* " Miserable comforters are ye all, O that I knew where I might find 
Him" (Job). 



90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

human being, man or wom&n. The perfect realisation 
can only be in the Eternal. Detachment from the world 
and its possessions is necessary for this. From the beginning 
there were people who sought deliverance from sorrow in 
retirement from the world. Many there were who left 
wife and child, goods and chattels, and went out as mendi- 
cants, seeking the salvation of the souls in poverty and 
purity of life. These groups of ascetics, who burst the 
bonds that bound them to a home life, prepared the way 
for the monasticism of the Buddhists. A life of holy re- 
nunciation has been recognised to be the chief path to 
deliverance. 

It follows that the Upani^ads insist on the inwardness 
of morality and attach great importance to the motive in 
conduct. Inner purity is more important than outer con- 
formity. Not only do the Upaniads say " do not steal," 
" do not murder," but they also declare " do not covet," 
or "do not hate or yield to anger, malice and greed." The 
mind will have to be purified, for it is no use cutting the 
branches if one leaves the roots intact. Conduct is judged 
by its subjective worth or the degree of sacrifice involved. 
The Upani^ads require us to look upon the whole world 
as born of God as the self of man is. If insistence on this 
doctrine is interpreted as reducing all love finally to a well- 
directed egoism, the Upanisads admit that morality and 
love are forms of the highest self-realisation, but only object 
to the word " egoism " with all its associations. Yajfia- 
valkya maintains that self-love lies at the foundation of 
all other kinds of love. Love of wealth and property, clan 
and country are special forms of self-love. The love of 
the finite has only instrumental value, while love of the 
| eternal has intrinsic worth. " The son is dear for the sake 
I of the eternal in him." Finite objects help us to realise 
\ the self. Only the love of the Eternal is supreme love, 
which is its own reward, for God is love. 1 To love God 
is bliss ; not to love Him is misery. To love God is to 
possess knowledge and immortality ; not to love Him is 
to be lost in doubt and delusion, sorrow and death.* In 
all true religion it is the same dominating motive that 

* KimftyaUna. Bfh., ill. 9. u Brh,, iv. 4. 5. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 91 

we have. " He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own 
soul. All they that hate me love death." x The sinners 
are the slayers of their souls, according to the Upani$ads 
"atmahano jan5b." 

The Upaniads ask us to renounce selfish endeavours, 
but not all interests. Detachment from self and attachment 
to God are what the Upaniads demand. The ideal sage 
has desires, though they are not selfish desires. " He who 
has no desires, who is beyond desires, whose desires are 
satisfied, whose desire is the soul, being even Brahman 
obtains Brahman." 2 Kama, which we are asked to re- 
nounce, is not desire as such, but only the animal desire, 
lust, the impulsive craving of the brute man. Freedom 
from kma is enjoined, but this is not blank passivity. We 
are asked to free ourselves from the tyranny of lust and 
greed, from the fascination of outward things, from the 
fulfilment of instinctive cravings. 3 Desire as such is not 
forbidden. It all depends upon the object. If a man's 
desire is the flesh, he becomes an adulterer ; if things of 
beauty, an artist ; if God, a saint. The desires for salvation 
and knowledge are highly commended. A distinction is 
drawn between true desires and false ones,4 and we are 
asked to share in the true ones. The filial piety and affection 
of a Naciketas, the intense love and devotion of a Savitri 
are not faults. The Lord of all creation has kama in the 
sense of desire. " He desired (akamayata), let me become 
many." If the Lord has desires, why should not we ? Wei 
do not find in the Upaniads any sweeping condemnation] 
of affections. We are asked to root out pride, resentment, 
lust, etc., and not the tender feelings of love, compassion 
and sympathy. It is true that here and there the Upaniads 
speak of tapas as a means of spiritual realisation. But 
tapas only means the development of soul force, the freeing 
of the soul from slavery to body, severe thinking or energising 
of mind, " whose tapas consists of thought itself." 5 Life is 
a great festival to which we are invited, that we might show 

' Prov., viii. 36. See Itt. Up. Brh.. iv. 4. 6. 

I The true taint is described as ttnta, irftnta, dinta, uparata, samthita. 
These all imply the conquest of passion. 

Chftndogya, vii. i. 3. s Mujtfaka, i. i. 9- 



98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

tapas or self-renunciation, d&na or liberality, firjavam or 
right dealing, ahimsSL or non-injury to life, and satyava- 
canam or truthfulness. 2 It is the spirit of disinterested* 
ness that is conveyed by tapas or tySga. " Not by karma, 
not by offspring, not by wealth, but by renunciation can 
immortality be gained." "' The Chandogya Upaniad says 
" Sraddha tapafc." 3 ^aitl^ asceticisgx^ To realise freedom 
from the bondage of outward things one need not go to 
the solitude of the forest and increase his privations and 
penances that so the last remnants of earthly dependence 
might be thrown away. " By renunciation thou shouldst 
enjoy/' says the la Upaniad. We can enjoy the world 
if we are not burdened by the bane of worldly possessions ; 
we are princes in the world if we do not harbour any thought 
of covetousness. Our enjoyment of the world is in direct 
proportion to our poverty. A call to renunciation in the 
sense of killing out the sense of separateness and developing 
disinterested love is the essence of all true religion. 4 

There was a change in Indian 'thought after the Vedic 
period.5 Due to the asceticism of the Atharva-Veda, the 
mystic tendency increased. During the period of the hymns 
of the Rg-Veda there was a sort of selfish abandonment 
to pleasure. The spiritual instinct of the human soul 
asserted itself, and in the period of the Upaniads the 
protest against the tyranny of the senses was heard in 
clear tones. No more is the spirit to follow helpless and 
miserable the flesh that rages and riots. But this spirit 
of renunciation did not degenerate in the Upaniads into 
the insane asceticism of a later day, which revelled in the 
burning of bodies and such other practices. In the manner 
of Buddha, Bharadvaja protests against both worldly life 
and asceticism. 6 We may even say that this measureless 
and fanatical asceticism is not indicative of a true renuncia- 
tion, but is only another form of selfishness. Attempts to 



Chin., iii. 16 ; Tait., i. 9- 

N&iftyagtya, iv. ax. s v. 10. 

4 " Them fool, that which them lowest is not quickened except it die 4 
(t Cor. xv. 36). 

i See Rhys Davids: Buddhism. Hibtort Licturn. pp. 21-33. 
See Mmtfaka Up. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 98 

gain solitary salvation embodying the view that one's soul 
is more precious than all the world's souls put together 
are not the expression of any genuine modesty of spirit. 
The Upani$ads require us to work but disinterestedly. 
The righteous man is not he who leaves the world and 
retires to a cloister, but he who lives in the world and loves 
the objects of the world, not for their own sake, but for 
the sake of the infinite they contain, the universal they 
conceal. To him God has unconditional value, and all 
objects possess derived values as vehicles of the whole 
or as the ways to God. Every common duty fulfilled, every 
individual sacrifice made, helps the realisation of the self. 
We may be fathers, for that is a way of transcending our 
narrow individuality and identifying ourselves with the 
larger purposes. Human love is a shadow of the divine 
love. We may love our wives for the sake of the joy that 
burns at the heart of things. " In truth, not for the hus- 
band's sake is the husband dear, but for the sake of the 
Atman is the husband dear," says the Upaniad. The 
same is asserted with constant repetition of wife, sons, 
kingdoms, the Brahmin and the warrior castes, world 
regions, gods, living creations and the universe. They are 
all here, not on their own account, but for the sake of the 
Eternal. 1 The objects of the world are represented not as 
lures to sin, but as pathways to the divine bliss. When 
once we have the right vision, we may have wealth, etc.* 
" Tato me riyam Svaha." " After that bring me wealth." 
And Samkara points out that wealth is an evil to the unre- 
generate, but not to the man of wisdom. Things of the 
world seemingly undivine are a perpetual challenge to the 
spiritual soul. He has to combat their independence and 
turn them into expressions of the divine. He does all 
work in this spirit of detachment. " To be detached is 
to be loosened from every tie which binds a soul to the 
earth, to be dependent on nothing sublunary, to lean on 
nothing temporal. It is to care nothiqg what other men 
choose to say or think of us or do ; to go about our work 
as soldiers go to battle, without a care for the consequences, 
to account credit, honour, name, easy circumstances, com* 

., ii. 4. 5* * Tait. i. 4. 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

, fort, human affection, just nothing at all when any religious 
| obligation requires sacrifice of them." * The Upaniads 
demand a sort of physical preparation for the spiritual 
fight. Cleansing* fasting, continence, solitude, etc., as 
purificatory of the body, are enjoined. " May my body 
become fit, may my tongue become extremely sweet, may 
I hear much in my ears." * This is not to despise the body 
as a dog and an encumbrance to the human soul. Nor 
has this purifying of the body, freeing of the senses, develop- 
ment of the mind, anything in common with self-torture.3 
Again, in the Chandogya Upamad* we are told that the world 
of Brahman belongs to those who find it by brahmacarya. 
Brahmacarya is the discipline a student has to undergo 
when studying under a guru. It is not an ascetic with- 
drawal from the world, for the same Upaniad in viii. 5 
makes brahmacarya equivalent to the performing of sacrifices. 
It looks as if these were meant as a warning against the 
false interpretation of brahmacarya as aloofness from the 
world. The body is the servant of the soul and not its 
prison. There is no indication in the Upaniads that we 
must give up life, mind, consciousness, intelligence, etc. On 
the other hand, the doctrine of divine immanence leads to 
an opposite conclusion. 

" The Indian sages, as the Upaniads speak of them," 
according to Gough, " seek for participation in divine life, 
not by pure feeling, high thought, and strenuous endeavour, 
not by unceasing effort to learn the true and do the right, 
but by the crushing out of every feeling and every thought, 
by vacuity, apathy, inertion and ecstasy." 5 The aim of 
the Upaniads, according to Eucken, is " not so much a 
penetration and overcoming of the world as a separation 
and liberation from it ; not an enhancement of life in order 
to maintain it even in face of the hardest resistance, but 
an abatement, a softening of all hardness, a dissolution, 
a fading away, a profound contemplation." 6 The view 

Newman : University Sketches, p. 127. Tait., i. 4. 

3 Gough makes a mistake by translating tapas into self-torture. In 
Tait. i. 4 the injunctions are to the effect that the body must be rendered 
fit lor the habitation of God. 

4 viii. 4. 3\ 5 Philosophy of the Upanifads, pp. 266-267. 
* Main Currents, p. 13. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS M 

here stated that the Upaniads demand a release from 
the conditions which constitute human life is a complete 
misconception. The Upaniads do not ask us to renounce 
life, do not taboo desires as such. The essence of ethical 
life is not the sublation of the will. The false asceticism 
which regards life as a dream and the world as an illusion, 
which has obsessed some thinkers in India as well as in 
Europe, is foreign to the prevailing tone of the Upaniads. 
A healthy joy in the life of the world pervades the atmo- 
sphere. To retire from the world is to despair of humanity 
and confess the discomfiture of God. M Only performing 
works one should desire to live a hundred years." l There 
is no call to forsake the world, but only to give up the dream 
of its separate reality. We are asked to pierce behind the 
veil, realise the presence of God in the world of nature and 
society. We are to renounce the world in its immediacy, 
break with its outward appearance, but redeem it for God 
and make it express the divinity within us and within it.! 
The Upaniad conception of the world is a direct challenge 
to the spiritual activity of man. A philosophy of resignation, 
an ascetic code of ethics, and a temper of languid world- 
weariness are an insult to the Creator of the universe, a sin 
against ourselves and the world which has a claim on us. 
The Upaniads believe in God, and so believe in the world 
as well. 

The Upaniads do not content themselves with merely 
emphasising the spirit of true religion. They also give us 
a code of duties, without which the moral ideal will be an 
uncertain guide. All forms of conduct where passion is 
controlled and reason reigns supreme, where there is self- 
transcendence in the sense of freedom from the narrowness 
of selfish individuality, where we work because we are all 
co-operators in the divine scheme, are virtuous, and their 
opposites vicious. Restraint, liberality and mercy are 
virtues.* The principle that the left hand 
what the right hand does is expressed in 
words : " Give with faith, give not 

plenty, give with bashfulness, give with ffepf give with 
sympathy/' 3 In Chindogya (iii. 17) 

> X*& Up*ni$md, ii. B r h., v. a. 




90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISAJ3S 

right dealing, non-injury to life and truthfulness are laid 
down as right forms of conduct. 1 To shrink from torturing 
the brute creation, to be sorry for a hunted hare, may be, 
according to our modern notions, silly sentimentalism fit 
only for squeamish women. But in the Upani$ads love 
of brute creation is considered to be a great virtue. Kind* 
ness and compassion for all that has life on earth is a general 
feature of Indian ethics. It is a crime to kill a deer for 
sport or 'worry a rat for amusement. To attain conquest 
over passions, a discipline is sometimes enjoined. The 
Indian thinkers believe in the dependence of mind on body, 
and so prescribe purity of food as necessary for the purity 
of mind. 1 Control over the passions must be spontaneous, 
and when that is not possible forcible restraint is sometimes 
adopted. A distinction is made between tapas, or forcible 
constraint of passions, and nyasa, or spiritual renunciation. 
Tapas is for the vanaprastha who is in the lower stage, 
while nyasa is for the sannyasin. The yogic practices of 
concentration, contemplation, etc., are to be met with. 
"The wise should sink speech in the mind and the mind 
into buddhi." 3 Meditation and concentration as means 
of cleansing the mind are also enjoined. The individual 
is asked to turn all his thoughts inward and think only 
of God, not with an eye to obtaining favours, but to becoming 
one with Him. But even this exaltation of contemplative 
life is not necessarily an escape from reality. It is only 
the means by which we can see the ultimate truth of things. 
" With sharp and subtle mind is He beheld." The four 
5ramas of the brahmacarin or student, gfhastha or house- 
holder, vanaprastha or anchorite, and sannyasi or wandering 
mendicant, are mentioned as representing the different steps 
by which man gradually purifies himself from all earthly 
taint and becomes fit for his spiritual home. 

Retirement from the world is enjoined for every Aryan 
when once his duties to society are fulfilled. It comes at 
the end of a man's career. The ascetic wanderer, whose life 
is love and conduct righteousness, turns his eyes towards 
heaven and keeps himself free from the temptations of the 

8*0 alto i. 9. 12. AhittfaddhAU 

t KftthA, i. 3. 10. 4 Ibid., iii. la. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 9* 

world. The simple but devout minds of India were haunted 
by dreams of imperishable beauty and echoes of unceasing 
musk. They live so intimately with the ideal that they 
are persuaded of its reality. To us it may be a dream, 
yet it is a dream in which they live, and it is therefore more 
real than the reality they ignore* A severe training of 
body and soul is prescribed for the ascetic, who alone can 
live such an ideal life. His life must be governed by the 
strictest purity and poverty. He is required to wear the 
yellow garments, shave his head and beg for his food in 
the streets. These are the means to help the soul to humility. 
The soul can mount to everlasting bliss by means of care- 
fully regulated prayers and fastings. What makes an 
ascetic great is his holiness and humility. It is not the 
capacity to do clever con jureW Tricks or dream hysteric 
dreams, but it is to remain pure from lust and resentment, 
passion and desire. This living martyrdom is ever so much 
more difficult than killing oneself. Death is easy. It is 
life that is taxing. A true ascetic is not one who gives 
up home and society to escape the social bonds ; he is not 
one who becomes a sannyasin because he suffers shipwreck 
in life. It is these latter that draw disgrace on the whole 
institution. The true sannyasin is he who, with self-control 
and spiritual vision, suffers for mankind. The labour of 
life is laid upon us to purify us from egoism, and social 
institutions are devices to help the growth of the soul. So 
after the gjrhastha&ama, or the stage of the householder, 
comes that of the recluse. The Upaniads declare that 
the knowers of Atman relinquish all selfish interests and 
become mendicants. " Knowing Him, the Atman, Brahmins 
relinquish the desire for posterity, the desire for possessions, 
the desire for worldly prosperity, and go forth as mendicants."* 
In Ancient India, though the sannyasin is poor and penni- 

According to Oldenberg, this is the earliest trace of Indian monas- 
titism. " From these Brahmins, who knowing the Atman renounce all that 
is earthly, and become beggars, the historical development progresses in 
a regular line tip to Buddha, who leaves kith and Ion, and goods and chattels* 
to seek deliverance, wandering homeless in the yellow garb of monk. The 
appearance of the doctrine of the Eternal One and the origin of monastic 
life in India are simultaneous ; they are the two issues of the same important 
occurrence " (Oldenberg : Btufctt*, p. 32). 

8 



98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

less, lives on daily charity, and has no power or authority 
of any kind, he is still held in such high esteem that the 
emperors of the world bow to him. Such is the reverence 
for holy life. 

The aramadharma, one of the central features of the 
Hindu religion, attempts to fill the whole of life with the 
power of spirit. It insists that a life of rigorous chastity is 
the proper preparation for married life. To the thinkers of 
the Upaniads, marriage is a religious sacrament, a form 
of divine service/ The home is sacred, and no religious 
ceremony is complete without the wife taking part in it. 
After the individual realises to the full the warmth and 
glow of human love and family affection, through marriage 
and parenthood, he is called upon to free himself slowly 
from attachment to home and family in order that he might 
realise his dignity as a citizen of the universe. If Buddhism 
failed to secure a permanent hold on the mind of India, 
it was because it exalted the ideal of celibacy over that 
of marriage and allowed all to enter the highest order of 
sannyasins, regardless of their previous preparation for it. 
The sannyasins are a spiritual brotherhood without possessions, 
without caste and nationality, enjoined to preach in the 
spirit of joy the gospel of love and service. They are the 
ambassadors of God on earth, witnessing to the beauty 
of holiness, the power of humility, the joy of poverty and 
the freedom of service. 

The rules of caste prescribe the duties to society. Man 
has to fulfil his duties whatever his lot may be. The 
functions depend on the capacities. Brahminhood does not 
depend on birth, but on character. The following story 
reveals this truth : 

Satyak&ma, the son of Jabl, addressed his mother and said* 
" I wish to become a brahmac&rin, mother. Of what family am I ? " 

She said to him : " I do not know, my child, of what family thou 
art. In my youth, when I had to move about much as a servant, 
I conceived thee. So I do not know of what family thou art. I 
am Jab&l& by name. Thou art Satyakftma. Say that thou art 
Satyakftma Jftbftla." 

He going to Gautama, the son of Haridrumat, said to him : " I 
wish to become a brahmacirin with thee. Sire. May I come to you ? " 

* See Tait. Up., i. 



PHDLOSOPHY OF THE UPANIgADS 99 

He said to him : "Of what family art thou, my friend ? " 
He replied : " I do not know, Sire, of what family I am. I asked 
my mother, and she answered : ' In my youth, when I had to move 
about much as a servant, I conceived thee. I do not know of what 
family thou art. I am Jabala by name, thou art Satyakima.' I am 
therefore Satyakftma Jftbala, Sire." 

He said to him : " No one but a true Brahmin would thus speak 
out. Go and fetch fuel, I shall initiate thee. Thou hast not swerved 
from the truth." 

The whole philosophy of the Upani?ads tends towards 
the softening of the divisions and the undermining of class 
hatreds and antipathies. God is the inner soul of all alike. 
So all must be capable of responding to the truth and 
therefore possess a right to be taught the truth. Sanat- 
kumara, the representative of the Katriyas, instructs the 
Brahmin Narada about the ultimate mystery of things. 
Higher philosophy and religion were by no means confined 
to the Brahmin class. We read of kings instructing the 
famous teachers of the time about the deep problems of 
spirit. Janaka and AjataSatru are Katriya kings who 
held religious congresses where philosophical disputations 
were conducted. It was a period of keen intellectual life. 
Even ordinary people were interested in the problems of 
philosophy. Wise men are found wandering up and down 
the country eager to debate. The Brahmin editors of the 
Upaniads had so sincere a regard for truth that they 
were ready to admit that Katriyas took an important 
part in these investigations.* Women, though they were 
much sheltered so far as the struggle for life was concerned, 
had equal rights with men in the spiritual struggle for 
salvation. Maitreyi, Gargi discuss the deep problems of 
spirit and enter into philosophic tournaments.3 

It is true that the Upaniads lay stress on knowledge 
as the means to salvation. " Tarati okam Stmavit," the 
knower of Atman, crosses all sorrow. " Brahmavid Brah- 
maiva bhavati," the knower of Brahman, becomes indeed 
Brahman. Because the Upaniads lay stress on jnana, 
and look upon all morality as a preliminary to it, there are 

i Chandogya, iv. 4. i. 4. 

See Kau?Itaki Up., i. 4. a ; Bfh., iti. 7 ; Chan. v. 3. "7. 

i Brh., ii. 4. 



100 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

critics who contend that the Upaniads in their enthusiasm 
for jfi&na relegate the will to a subordinate place. Deussen, 
after urging that morality has no meaning for the enlight- 
ened, says that it is not necessary even for the unenlightened. 
"Moral conduct cannot contribute directly but only in- 
directly to the attainment of the knowledge that brings 
emancipation. For this knowledge is not a becoming 
something which had no previous existence and might be 
brought about by appropriate means, but it is the per* 
ception of that which previously existed from all eternity." 
But the Upaniads do not advocate knowledge in the 
narrow sense of the term as the sole means to salvation. 
" That self cannot be gained by the knowledge of the Veda 
or by understanding or by much learning." Right living 
is also insisted on. Knowledge should be accompanied by 
virtue. If the candidate for theology does not possess 
moral and spiritual attainments, he is not admitted, what- 
ever be his zeal and inquisitiveness.3 Jfi&na, we must 
make it dear, is not mere intellectual ability. It is the 
soul-sense. The mind of the applicant must not be too 
restless or too much taken up with the world to fix itself 
on the Highest. His heart must be purified and warmed 
by devotion to God. We hear in the Upaniads of people 
who are required to go through a long course of moral and 
spiritual discipline before they are taken up as students 
by those ris, the specialists in the science of God. In 
the PraSna Upaniad, Pippalada sends away six inquirers" 
after God for another year of discipline. In the Chandogya 
Upaniad, Satyakama Jabila is sent to the wilds of the 
forests to tend the teacher's cattle, that thereby he might 
cultivate habits of solitary reflection and come into contact 
with nature. The jfiana which the Upaniads emphasise 
is the faith which becomes the living law of the soul's energy. 
As the tree bears fruit, knowledge must realise itself in work. 
When we have jnana we are said to possess truth, make it 
our own and be transformed by it. This is not possible 
for " one who has not ceased from wicked conduct, who 

Philosophy of th* Upanifadt, p. 362. 
Mmtfaka, iii. 2. 3. See alto iii. I. 8. 
I See Katha, i. 2. 24-25. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 101 

is not calm, who is not collected and in whose heart there 
is not peace." Rim&nuja therefore interprets knowledge to 
be dhyina, meditation, or upasana, worship. There does 
not seem to be any justification for the interpretation that 
excludes moral life from knowledge. It is true that the 
Upaniads urge that mere works will not do, unless these 
express the feeling of unity with the self. " Nay, even if 
one who does not know that self should perform here some 
great holy work, it will perish for him in the end. If the 
man worships the self only as his true spirit, his work does 
not perish. For whatever he desires, that he obtains from 
this self/ 9 x This passage insists that works must be per- 
formed with knowledge. Without faith in the transcendent 
mere works languish.* The real end of man cannot be 
reached by mere mechanical goodness. In all works, in 
offering sacrifices, in observing ritual, there is self-trans- 
cendence, but not necessarily identification with the infinite. 
All works must be done with the definite motive of promoting 
the interest of the real self. Without God our life has no 
aim, no existence and no support. The Upaniads con- 
demn the rites and sacrifices performed with the sole idea 
of bringing about large returns of outward good either in 
this world or in the next. We should not do our duty 
with the motive of purchasing shares in the other world 
or opening a bank account with God. In protesting against 
such a mechanical conception of duty in the Brahmanas, 
the Upaniads lay stress on a necessary truth. But they 
lend no support to the view that works and knowledge 
are exclusive of each other, and that knowledge alone leads 
to salvation. The Upaniads insist on a life of spirit 
which combines both jnina and karma. 

Just as the ideal of the intellect cannot be realised so 
long as we remain at the intellectual level, but can be found 
when we transcend that level, and rise to intuition, even 
so the ideal of morality cannot be reached so long as we 
remain at the moral level, but can be reached when we rise 
to religion. At the moral level the two sides of our nature, 
the finite and the infinite, are in conflict. The finite breathes 
egoism or ahaihk&ra, and gives the individual a sense of 
L 4. 15. ' See Bfh., iii. 8. 10. 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

his separateness from the universal. The infinite in him 
rushes forth to realise itself in the world. The self -fulfilment 
Of spirit is opposed by the tendency to the disintegration 
of spirit. We attempt to hold the lower nature in check 
through the practice of morality, but until the lower is 
completely spiritualised the ideal is not attained. It is 
when we destroy the exclusiveness of our individuality 
and therewith the sense of separateness that we enter the 
joy of religion and realise the full freedom of the spirit. 

The possibility of this religious realisation is the pre- 
supposition of all morality. Without it we cannot be sure 
that the aspirations of morality will be realised. In the 
face of disasters and dreads, death and disease, the con* 
viction that in spite of the apparent discord and contra- 
diction all things work together for good, cheers us. Morality 
requires the postulate of religion. God gives us the security 
that all is well with the world and man is bound to 
win. " When a man finds his peace and resting-place in 
that invisible, intangible, inexpressible, unfathomable, 
then has he attained to peace. If, however, a man admits 
therein an interval, a separation, then his unrest continues ; 
it is, moreover, the unrest of one who imagines himself 
wise." 1 With this religious guarantee the pressure of cir- 
cumstance or the persecution of man fails to disquiet us. 
No rivalry provokes us to anger or bitterness. Religion 
is the inspiration of morality. Without religion morality 
becomes an eternal striving, a perpetual progress, an endless 
aspiration towards something we do not have. In religion 
all this is turned into realisation, enjoyment and fruition. 
Then is the weakness of finite endowment overcome, and the 
finite self becomes endowed with a meaning and a mission. 
When once this consciousness is reached the continuance 
or the cessation of bodily existence becomes a matter of 
indifference.* Man is consumed with the fire of the love 
of God and the service of humanity. He does not care 

* Brh., iv. 2. 4. 

" I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like 
a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not : yea, I sought 
him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the 
upright : for the end of that man is peace " (Psa. xxxvii. 35-37). 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANBADS 108 

whether the path he has to traverse is smooth or rough. 
When a man realises the truth, evil turns away from him 
and is itself destroyed, just as a ball of earth tutting against 
a solid stone. 1 

As the intuitional level goes beyond the categories of 
intellect, even so does the religious level pass beyond the 
distinctions of good and evil. He who reaches the highest 
is above all laws. 2 " Him does not afflict the thought, 
why have I not done what is good, why have I committed 
sin ? " 3 He fears nothing and does not trouble himself 
about his deeds and misdeeds in the past. " He the im- 
mortal is beyond both, beyond good and evil ; what is 
done and what is left undone cause him no pain, his domain 
is affected by no action." This admits the possibility of 
blotting out the effects of a sinful life by a sincere change 
of heart. On this principle is based the Christian doctrine 
that no amount of sin is a bar to salvation, provided an 
act of sure repentance has been performed. When once 
the soul attains the real, " in whom to dwell is happiness 
imperishable," the human body is suffused with the splen- 
dour of divinity in which all that is mean and vile shrivels 
and dies. The question of morality has no significance. 
For it is no more the individual that does anything. His 
will is God's will and his life God's life. He has joined the 
whole, and thus become the whole. All action flows from 
the spring in God. There is no more the distinction between 
God and the individual. Dr. Bosanquet, in his excellent 
little book on What Religion Is, brings out this fundamental 
oneness of the highest condition. " In the purity of love 
and will with the supreme good, you are not only ' saved/ 
but you are ' free ' and ' strong.' . . . You will not be 
helped by trying to divide up the unity and tell how much 
comes from ' you ' and how much from ' God/ You have 
got to deepen yourself in it, or let it deepen itself in you, 
whatever phrase expresses the fact best to your mind." 4 

* Chftndogya, i. 2. 7. Kau$Italri, ii. 8 ; Brh., iv. 4. 22, 

i Tait., ii. 9. 

4 Pp. 20-21. " As a drop of water is diffused in a jar of wine, taking 
its taste and colour, and as molten iron becomes like to fire and casts off 
its form, and as the air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that 



104 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

Unfortunately, this central truth of religious life is not 
sufficiently understood by even some good students of 
Indian thought. The latest critic of the Upani?ads, Dr. 
Hume, observes : " There is a wide difference between the 
Upaniadic theory and the theory of the Greek sages, 
that the man who has knowledge should thereby become 
virtuous in character, or that the result of teaching should 
be a virtuous life. Here the possession of some metaphysical 
knowledge actually cancels all past sins and even permits 
the knower unblushingly to continue in ' what seems to 
be much evil" with perfect impunity, although such acts 
are heinous crimes and are disastrous in their effect for 
K others who lack that kind of knowledge/' * We have 
already said that the knowledge of the Upaniads is not 
metaphysical acumen or dialectical subtlety, but the reali- 
sation of the highest as the supreme power at the heart 
of the universe. This spiritual perception is possible only 
with a thorough transformation of human nature in its 
theoretical and practical aspects. What Dr. Hume calls 
" the possession of some metaphysical knowledge " is pos- 
sible only for the pure in heart. They have perfect freedom. 
" In that highest state a thief is not a thief, a murderer 
not a murderer. He is not followed by good, nor followed 
by evil, for he then overcomes all the sorrows of the heart." * 
The free can do what they choose with perfect impunity, 
but this freedom is not "the madness of license." J The 
mystic becomes a law unto himself and the lord of 
himself and of the world in which he lives. Laws and 
regulations are necessary for those men who do not naturally 
conform to the dictates of conscience. But for those who 
have risen above their selfish egos, morality becomes the 
very condition of their being, and law is fulfilled in love. 
There is no possibility of evil-doing in them. Pressure 

Mine light, so that it seems not illumined but itself the light, thus in the 
saints every human affection must in ineffable mode be liquefied oi itself 
and transfused into the Will of God. How could God be all, if in man any- 
thing of man remained ? A certain substance will remain, but in another 
form, another glory, another power " (St. Bernard, quoted in Mind, 1913, 

P- 3*9). 

* Introduction to Tk$ Thirtttn Principal Upanifads, p. 60. 

* Bfh., iv* 3 Rabindranath Tagore: S*dha*a t p. 18, 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 105 

from without is converted into an inward acceptance. Till 
the spiritual life is won, the law of morality appears to 
be an external command which man has to obey with effort 
and pain. But when the light is obtained it becomes the 
internal life of the spirit, working itself out unconsciously 
and spontaneously. The saint's action is an absolute sur- 
render to the spontaneity of spirit, and is not an unwilling 
obedience to externally imposed laws. We have the free 
outpouring of an unselfish spirit which does not calculate 
the rewards of action or the penalties of omission. The 
conventional standards, the external duties and the ethical 
rules become meaningless to him. The soul delights in 
that supreme blessedness, perceives the unity of all, and 
loves the world as we love our separate selves. " A per- 
fectly good will would therefore be equally subject to objective 
laws (viz. laws of good), but could not be conceived as 
obliged thereby to act lawfully, because of itself from its 
subjective constitution it can only be determined by the 
conception of good. Therefore no imperatives hold for the 
Divine will or in general for a holy will ; ought is here out 
of place, because volition is already of itself necessarily 
in unison with the law." x The moral laws are its expression, 
and therefore do not bind it. Such a supreme soul is the 
creator of values and svarat* a law to himself. In the 
scheme of the world we have three classes of beings : 
(i) Those who strive after self-assertion and gratification of 
appetites, the bad men who, if ever they practise virtue, 
do so for selfish reasons, such as hope of heaven or fear of 
hell ; (2) men who know the law and try to conform to 
it with great effort and trouble, since their selves are subject 
to discord ; and (3) the saviours of the world, who have 
overcome the conflict of life and attained peace. They know 
the purpose of life and live up to it unconsciously and auto- 
matically. The Upaniad asks us in cases of doubt and 
difficulty to conduct ourselves in the manner in which the 
knowers of Brahman devoted to duty would do. 3 These 
great men go on doing their daily work, diffusing virtue 
as the star diffuses light and the flower perfume, without 

Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, p. 31 (Abbot's edition). 
* Svayam eva rftjafc, ) Tait. 4, tx. 



106 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UtAKI^ADS 

even being aware of it. Every man can realise such a 
condition. The possibility of becoming one with God can 
be established only by the actuality of it. The fact of 
realisation is the only proof of the possibility of the identi- 
fication of man with the all-powerful spirit. According 
to Christian thinkers, one such complete manifestation of 
God in man is in the personality of Jesus. The Upani$ads 
declare that all men have in them the possibility of rising 
to their full divine stature, and can realise it if they strive 
for it. 

Since morality has a meaning only in the imperfect 
world where man is struggling to realise his highest nature, 
it is sometimes said that in the metaphysical system of 
the Upaniads morality does not find a worthy place. 
Deussen observes that when " the knowledge of the Atman 
has been gained, every action and therefore every moral 
action also has been deprived of meaning." l All through 
we have been indicating the basis otsuch complaints. Moral 
activity is not an end in itself. It is to be taken over into 
the perfect life. Only this has transcendental worth. The 
liberated in the fine phrase of the Talmud share with the 
Almighty in the work of creation. Here we have morality 
as obedience to a law displaced by the true idea of free 
service of an end, spontaneous devotion to the whole. In 
this state the individual being is absorbed in the Supreme. 
This alone has transcendental worth, but the moral struggle 
as preparing the way for it is not useless. 

XVI 

THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS 

Religion is essentially a matter of life and experience. 
The Upaniads prescribe three stages in the growth of the 
religious consciousness, viz. srava^a, which literally means 
listening, manana or reflection, and nididhyasana or con- 
templative meditation. 2 The first stage points to the place 

1 Philosophy of the Upanifads, p. 362. 

Bj-h. Up., ii. 4. 5 ; iv. 5. 6. Udayana in his Kutum&fijali, L 3, refers to 
them under the names of ftgama or scripture, anumftna or inference, and dhyftna 
or meditation. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 107 

of tradition in religious life. For the initiation of faith 
in the living God, some kind of traditional revelation is 
necessary. " Blessed are they that have not seen and 
yet have believed." The bulk of men rest with tradition 
and symbol. Religion, according to the Upaniads, is not, 
however, to be confused with traditionalism. By strenuous 
intellectual effort, we should try to understand the essential 
meaning of or the truth contained in the tradition. The 
need for rational thought is brought out in the second stage. 
The mere assumption of the first stage becomes now a logical 
conclusion. The understanding of truth, however, is not 
the attainment of reality. To the highest religious con- 
sciousness, the real is not something inferred, but given. 
This experience of reality, this consciousness of the infinite, 
requires the development of a mode of apprehension distinct 
from that of mere reason. Nididhyasana, or contemplative 
meditation, helps us to transform the logical idea into a 
spiritual perception, or darSana, which is another name 
for the effective realisation of truth already admitted. It 
is to stand alone, and like Whitman, after a logical study 
of astronomy, " to gaze in perfect silence at the stars." 
It is to hold before the mind's eye the object we seek to 
know. Meditation is not advised as a means to trance and i 
catalepsy, which are most emphatically denounced, but only 
as a help for the mind to rest on the object. By suppressing 
all fluctuations of thought and the distractions of desire, 
we allow the mind to settle on the object, penetrate it and 
become one with it. The worship of God, the practice of good- 
ness and the pursuit of truth are aids to the building up 
of the life of truth in the soul. While the speculative mind 
contemplates the being of God, the emotional nature in its 
passionate devotion for God loses itself in Him. The object 
is no more outside us as in ordinary experience. There is 
an intense realisation, which pulses through the whole 
being, a becoming one with God as it were. The worshipper 
grows akin to that which he worships. The object becomes 
not only the content of but the consciousness itself of the 
contemplator. The transformation of mind is in a sense 
the transformation of existence itself. The Upanigads 
speak to us of the intuition of minor deities as well as the 



106 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

ecstatic intuition of Brahman. So long as the otjects 
intuited have limitations or traces of individuality, the ulti- 
mate goal is not reached. We must intuit Brahman to 
become Brahman. 

It is dear that the religion of the Upaniads insists on 
a transformation of the whole nature of man. It is not 
a mere formal cult or an ethical discipline or a dogmatic 
creed. It is untrue to say that the Upaniads do not care 
for the non-intellectual sides of human nature. They pro* 
vide room for an emotional as well as a speculative religion. 
The Upaniads are aware of the contradictions which 
ordinary religious consciousness is apt to exhibit. If 
God is perfect goodness, then morality is already 
realised, for everything that is must be the expression 
of a perfect will. If God is the Creator of the world, 
then He must bring something into existence which 
limits His nature. Either the world created is distinct 
from God the Creator, in which case He is limited by His 
creation, or the two are identical, a possibility which is 
repugnant to all religion and morality. In religion we 
have the will of man set over against the will of God. If 
the two are one, then there is no morality, for there is no 
independent reality of the human will. If the two are 
different, then God becomes limited and finite, and a finite 
God cannot inspire confidence in us. Again, if we attribute 
to God a free will, then He can overrule karma, and caprice 
will become the central fact ; if on the other hand He is 
subject to laws and treats us according to our karma, then 
His freedom is restricted. These contradictions may lead 
us to think that the highest conception of God we can 
possibly have is not the highest reality. Religion may 
lag behind and have to be content with a finite God, how- 
ever contradictory such a conception may be. This may 
be justified on the ground that it is not its main business 
to discover the highest truth, and that philosophically we 
may have to admit that all conceptions of God, however 
lofty they may be, are only relative.* While thfe may 
be the implication of the Upani$ad theory, it becomes an 
explicit doctrine only when the intuitive vision of the 

1 See Kena, i. 5. 8. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 100 

Upani^ads is converted into a scientific system of thought. 
The Upaniads, indeed, recognise higher and lower forms 
of religion. 

We have to remember that the highest religion of the 
Upani?ads, which insists on meditation and morality and 
worship of God in spirit and in truth, is not encumbered 
by such traditional dogmas and miracles as still hang upon 
the skirts of other religions. Its central principle that 
there is one supreme reality that manifests itself in the 
universe is not asserted as a dogma. It is the ultimate 
truth at which it is possible for human understanding to 
arrive. The progress of science and philosophy does not 
conflict with it but only confirms it. The Upaniad re- 
ligion is the feeling of reverence and love for the great spirit. 
Such meditation is spiritualised bhakti. It recognises also 
that the distinction between subject and object melts away 
in the heart of religious fervour. The oneness and whole- 
ness of the world is the supreme fact of the Upaniad religion. 
This may not satisfy the ordinary religious consciousness. 
Man as finite self is incapable of grasping the absolute 
reality. He makes an object of it set over against himself. 
The Absolute becomes a personal God. Though it is not 
the final truth, ordinary religious consciousness requires it. 
God is the friend and helper, the father and creator, the 
governor of the universe. He is said to be the supreme 
person (Puruottama), but He does not rule the world from 
without. In that case there would be no organic connection 
between Him and the world. He is the inner guide or the 
antaryami. Though a person, he is said to be above all, 
in all, and through all. All things arfe of Him, in Him 
and unto Him. But as Jacobi would put it, an understood 
God is no God at all. To imagine God is what we think 
is nothing less than blasphemy. Though the God of religion 
is a limited expression of the absolute, it is not a mere 
imaginative presentation. In the development of the abso- 
lute into the universe conceived by the finite mind, the 
first existent being is the God or the universal soul pos- 
sessing self-consciousness. He is the absolute personified. 
The Upaniads do not care to identify Him with the ideal 
tendency of things opposing and struggling through the 



110 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPAKISADS 

non-ideal ; in that case He would be reduced to the level 
of the finite. According to the Upaniads, the Absolute 
and God are one; we call it the supreme Brahman to 
emphasise its transcendence of the finite, its unknowability, 
its all-comprehensiveness ; we call it I&vara to emphasise 
the personal aspect so necessary for religious devotion. 
The relation between the two, the absolute Brahman and 
the personal Ifivara, is said to be like that of the true Lord 
to the idol. 1 Yet the two are one. The absolute is both per- 
sonal and impersonal. 2 Meditation on the supreme becomes 
the passionate devotion to the Lord of the universe. The 
individual looks upon God as something transcendent, and 
feels acutely the need of grace. Devaprasada, or grace of 
God, is the condition of the deliverance of man from bondage. 
" This Atman cannot be attained through study or intelli- 
gence or much learning whom he wishes to attain by him 
it can be attained. To him the Atman reveals its true 
nature." 3 Sometimes the religious passion grows so fervent 
that the devotee exclaims : " It is He who inspires to do good 
works the man whom He will lead on high, and it is He 
who inspires to do evil works the man whom He will 
lead downwards." 4 The oneness of God and man is 
realised only after a good deal of discipline and exercise. 
When the ideal of religion is reached, the personal conception 
is transcended. The higher we go in religious experience, 
the more we perceive the identity between the object of 
worship and the worshipper, till at last the two become one. 
Then there is no worship in the traditional sense of the 
term. The absolute is felt as a boundless spirit pervading 
the whole universe and flooding the soul of man. Our 
limits fall away and the defects incident to man's imperfec- 
tion dissolve. The end of religion is the transcendence 
of religion. Ideal religion overcomes the duality with 
which it starts. Religious worship starts with fear, passes 
through reverence, love and communion with the eternal, 
and culminates in the ecstatic life, where God and the soul 



* Saihkara's Commentary on Tait., i. 6. " &&lagram 
Mflrtftmflrtam. Sarfikara's Commentary on Tait., 



ama iva 
i. 6. 

s Muncjaka, iii. 2. 3 ; Katha, ii. 23* 
4 Kausltaki, iii. 8. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS ill 

melt into each other. Religious worship has to be accepted 
until the perfect condition is reached. 

Imperfect forms of worship are admitted as preparatory 
to the perfect. The Upaniads are led into inconsistent 
notions when they try to do too much justice to the con- 
flicting creeds which prevailed among the peoples of the 
time. Some believed in magic ; some tried to subdue the 
powers of nature by concentration and other ascetic prac- 
tices ; some were lost in a futile formalism ; some wor- 
shipped the Vedic gods ; some tried to effect an escape 
from this world of change by means of spiritual insight. 
The Upaniad thinkers, conscious of the weakness of 
hum^n understanding which has to limit the God present 
in all things, at all times, and in all places to some special 
place, time and thing, recognise that if lower forms of 
worship are dismissed, there is the risk of banishing God 
altogether out of life. Some worship is better than none, 
and so it is said that we become whatever form we worship. 
" Let him worship the Brahman as support, and he becomes 
supported. Let him worship Brahman as greatness, and 
he becomes great. Let him worship Brahman as mind, 
he becomes endowed with mind. And let him worship 
Brahman as Brahman, and he will become possessed of 
Brahman/ 9 x God reveals Himself in different ways to 
different men. This is not to be confused with the doctrine 
of incarnations, which is unknown to the Upanisads. The 
Upaniads consider the highest form of religion to be 
spiritual meditation on the absolute ; next in rank is the 
passionate devotion to the one immanent Lord ; lowest of 
all is the worship of the Vedic devas and other deities. 

It is frequently urged that the Upaniads do not admit 
of any religious worship. Dr. Urquhart writes : " However 
clearly the attitude of true worship may seem to be indicated, 
there is a constant refrain sometimes even in the same verse 
to the effect that the self who is to be worshipped is the 
self of the worshipper, and that consequently there is no 
such distinction between the two (God and man), as is 
demanded by the fully theistic relation." * The Upanisads 

Tait, iii. zo ; see also Chin., i. 3. 12 ; Bj-h., i. 2. 13. 
* The Upanifads and Life, p. 60. 



112 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

are emphatic about the oneness of God and man* The 
relative difference we recognise between the two is taken 
over in a higher unity. " If a man worships another 
divinity with the idea that he and the God are different, 
he does not know/' x The unity of spirit is the first prin- 
ciple of the Upani$ad doctrine. Divine immanence is its 
central fact. If that is inconsistent with religious worship, 
it means only that theism has no place for true religion, 
since a true theism must accept divine immanence. All 
true religion declares that finite things are not self-sustained, 
are not self-evolved, but that God is over all, through all, 
in all, the ground of existence, the source of life and the 
goal of desire. " If I ascend up into heaven, thou art 
there : if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter- 
most parts of the sea ; even there shall Thy hand lead me."* 
" Am I a God, at hand, saith the Lord and not a God afar 
off ? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall 
not see him ? saith the Lord ; Do not I fill Heaven and 
earth ? " " In God, we live and move and have our being," 3 
and " He who dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God 
in him." 4 All true religion recognises the immanence of 
God and is highly mystic. 



XVII 

MOKSA OR RELEASE 

Is the highest state of religious realisation, the atone- 
ment with the supreme godhead, a mere vanishing into 
nothingness ? The Upaniad view is that there is in the 
highest condition a disintegration of individuality, a giving 
up of selfish isolation, but it is not a mere nothing or death. 
" As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their 
name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and 
form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all." 5 The 
Upaniads do not recognise the ultimate reality of the 

* Bj-h., i. 4. 10. Psalm 

i St. Paul. 4 St. John. 

f Murfaka, iii. 2. 8. See alto Ptafaa, vi. 5. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 118 

narrow individual self. Those who pray for personal im- 
mortality take their stand 6n the ultimateness of the 
individual, and urge its maintenance beyond the world. 
The real in finite life, what is best in the individual's nature, 
is the infinite, and that persists beyond the limits of physical 
existence. Nothing of value is lost. Whatever spiritual 
values we seek after on earth and find imperfectly, we 
possess in the highest condition absolutely. As human 
beings we reach our ideals imperfectly, in flashes and 
moments of insight. In the highest condition we attain 
to them perfectly, completely and absolutely. The Taitti- 
riya Upaniad points out how the bliss we have in the 
world is only a shadow of the divine bliss, a feeble apology 
for it. 1 After all our troubles in the sea of life we do not 
reach a desert shore where we are obliged to die of hunger. 
The liberated condition must be looked upon as the fullest 
expression of the self. The ascent to God will be a lapse 
into the void or the abyss, if the ultimate Brahman is itself 
looked upon as an abstraction. Then the goal of man is 
annihilation. The Upaniads dispute such a conclusion. 
The highest is a state of rapture and ecstasy, a condition 
of inanda, where the creature as creature is abolished, but 
becomes one with the Creator, or more accurately realises 
his oneness with Him. We cannot describe this perfection 
adequately. We use symbols. The nature of eternal life 
is a condition of inanda or freedom, a state of joyous ex- 
pansion of the soul, where heaven and earth are felt to flow 
together. 

Its nature cannot be characterised except through image 
and metaphor. We have some states in this life which 
may be taken as illustrations of eternal or timeless existence. 
Baron Von Hugel speaks to us of trance conditions which 
" appear to the experiencing soul, in proportion to their 
concentration, as timeless, i.e. as non-successive, simul- 
taneous, hence as eternal. . . . The eternity of the soul is 
not here a conclusion drawn from the apparent God-likeness 
in other respects, of the soul when in this condition, 
but the eternity, on the contrary, is the very centre 
of the experience itself, and is the chief inducement 

See ii. 8 ; Kau$!taki, i. 3. 5 ; Brh.* iv. 3, 33. 

9 



114 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

to the soul for holding itself to be divine. The 
soul's immortality cannot be experienced in advance of 
death, whilst its eternity, in the sense indicated, is or 
seems to be directly experienced in such " this-life " states. 
Hence the belief in immortality is here derivative, that in 
eternity is primary/' x In the enjoyment of a melody, 
the contemplation of a work of art, in grasping an argument 
as a whole, we have the mystical condition, the sight of 
God, the experience of eternity. 9 The temporal happenings 
become eternal when viewed in relation to the absolute, 
and thus assigned their true worth. 

Since from our human point of view it is not possible 
to describe the fullness of the absolute reality, the Upaniads 
do not describe precisely the condition of ultimate freedom. 
There are two conflicting accounts running throughout : 
that it is a state of likeness to God, and that it is a state 
of oneness with God. 

There are passages where the individual is said to 
become one with the highest. "The pranava is the bow, 
the Atman is the arrow, and the Brahman is said to be its 
mark. It should be hit by one who is self-collected, and 
that which hits becomes like the arrow, one with the 

* Eternal Lift, p. 27. 

St. Augustine in his Confessions, says : " Suppose all the tumult of 
the flesh in us were hushed for ever, and all sensible images of earth and 
sea and air were put to silence ; suppose the heavens were still and even 
the soul spoke no words to itself, but passed beyond all thought of itself ; 
suppose all dreams and revelations of imagination were hushed with every 
word and sign and everything that belongs to this transitory world ; suppose 
they were all silenced though, if they speak to one who hears, what they 
say is, ' We made not ourselves, but He made us who abides for ever ' yet 
suppose they only uttered this and then were silent, when they had turned 
the ears of the hearer to Him who made them, leaving Him to speak alone, 
not through them but through Himself, so that we could hear His words, 
not through any tongue of flesh nor by the voice of an angel, nor in thunder, 
nor in any likeness that hides what it reveals ; suppose then that the God 
whom through such manifestations we have learnt to love were to be 
revealed to us directly without any such mediation just as, but now, we 
reached out of ourselves and touched by a flash of insight the eternal wisdom 
that abides above all ; suppose, lastly, that this vision of God were to be 
prolonged for ever, and all other inferior modes of vision were to be taken 
away, so that this alone should ravish and absorb the beholder and entrance 
him in mystic joy, and our very life for ever like the moment of clear insight 
mad inspiration to which we rose is not this just what is meant by the words 
9 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'?'! 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 115 

mark, that is Brahman." * The Atman becomes one with 
Brahman. 9 Here absolute identity between the soul and 
Brahman is asserted. Again, " All these become one in the 
highest imperishable Brahman/' 3 " He becomes merged 
in the supreme undecaying Atman." 4 " He becomes 
omniscient and becomes all." 5 " He enters into all." * The 
redeemed soul enters into all things and becomes all things 
in spirit. " Having attained him, the seers content with 
their knowledge, their purpose accomplished, free from all 
desire, and with full composure, having attained the all* 
pervading Atman on all sides, ever concentrating their 
minds, enter into everything." 7 They who see the whole 
universe held firm in the one all-enfolding presence cannot 
have any sorrow or torment. " Having without doubt 
well ascertained the significance of the knowledge of the 
Vedanta, the seekers, their minds purified by dint of re- 
nunciation attain the worlds of that Brahman, and when 
their body falls, their Atman being one with the highest 
immortal Brahman, are absolved all round." ' The liberated 
soul feels his oneness with God so intensely that he calls 
himself the creator of the world. " I am the food, I am 
the food-eater. I am the subject, I am the object, I am 
the two together. I am the firstborn, the destroyer of the 
world also. I am the sunlike light I am the centre of 
the world, of immortal gods." 9 These passages seem to 
imply that there is no sense of individuality, and therefore 
no possibility of action in the highest state. It seems to 
be a survival without consciousness, where body is dissolved 
and mind extinguished and all is lost in a boundless dark- 
ness. If we please, we may call it the sleep without dreams, 
or the peace without understanding. When Yajnavalkya 
explains it to Maitreyi in the words : " As a lump of salt 
which is thrown into the water dissolves and cannot be 
gathered up again, but wherever water is drawn, it is salty, 
so truly is it with this great being, the endless, the unlimited, 



ii. 2. 2. See also Katha, ii. 15. 
Saravat tanmayo bhavet. 

Mimtfaka, Hi. 2. 7. Sarva cklbhavanti. Prana, iv. 9. 

iv. 10. Sa sarvajfiafe sarvo bhavati. 
i. vii. Sarvam evftviianti. 
Mtutfaka, iii. a. 5. ' iii. 2. 6. Tait, iii. 



116 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

the fullness of knowledge, from these beings it came into 
view and with them it vanishes. There is no consciousness 
after death/' Maitreyi observes: "This speech of thine, 
that there is no consciousness after death perplexes me/' 
Y&jfiavalkya replies : " I tell thee nothing perplexing, it is 
quite comprehensible. Where there is a duality of exist- 
ences, one can see the other, one can smell the other, one 
can speak to the other, one can hear the other, one can 
think of the other, one can apprehend the other. But 
where everything has turned into his Atman, by whom 
and whom shall he see, by whom and whom shall he smell, 
by whom and to whom shall he speak, by whom and whom 
shall he hear, think and apprehend ? By whom shall he 
apprehend him through whom he apprehends this universe ? 
Through whom shall he apprehend him the apprehender ? " 
From this it is clear that in some way hard for our intellect 
to grasp the soul attains liberation devoid of any activity, 
perception, thought or consciousness, which are all sympto- 
matic of a dualistic vision. These activities rest on the 
opposition of subject and object, and are possible only in 
the world of relativity. In the absolute world, all plurality 
is said to disappear with the resulting activities of percep- 
tion and action. It is then the everlasting, unchangeable 
itself, in whose perfection all movement is stilled, all colours 
pale and all sounds pass away. This is the negative side of 
freedom, which is all that is open to finite intelligence. There 
is also the positive side. Simply because we as finite cannot 
describe the fullness of the absolute state, it does not become 
a negative blank. Negatively, the soul seems to lose all 
distinction and become something which is neither this 
nor that, but some vague indeterminate somewhat. Those 
careless beings who make a show of sleeping through it 
all may really be very active. When the positive aspect 
is emphasised, the liberated soul is looked upon as a perfected 
individual with a status of absolute equality with the 
supreme soul. 1 The passages which declare that the liberated 
soul traverses the worlds, obtaining all its wishes, indicate 
that the freed soul has yet an active existence. " Traversing 
these worlds, having the food he likes, taking the form he 
Paramaifa sftsnyain uj*itL Mtutfak*, iii. i. 3. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 117 

likes, he sits singing songs/' l And yet he has the feeling 
that he is one with God. According to the Chandogya, 
immortality is lifting oneself up to the region of the deity.* 
Mu$4aka holds it to be the companionship with God. 3 
Absolute likeness with God is also suggested. 4 To make 
room for such individual action it is said that the individual 
becomes like God. Whatever differences there might be 
about the exact nature of the highest condition, one thing 
is clear, that it is a state of activity, full of freedom and 
perfection. Strictly speaking, we cannot describe that 
state, but if a description is wanted, it is best to consider 
it to be a state of divine life. The self is not annihilated 
any more than the ray of the sun is lost in the sun, the 
wave of the sea in the ocean, the notes of music in the one 
harmony. The song of the individual is not lost in the 
music of the world march. It is the same for ever and 
yet not the same. It is said that the liberated soul becomes 
one with all and lives a life in unity with God. The positive 
description seems to suggest a sense of individuality which 
helps him to act in this world, though this individuality 
is not based on any self-feeling. This individualisation of 
life seems to be necessary for the fulfilment of the joy of 
the one supreme. Even though for purposes of self-expres- 
sion there is this possession of a centre of individuality, 
we are told that the soul is conscious of its glory and the 
greatness of immortality. It feels that God is at work in 
the cosmic drama, where the divine consciousness plays 
and acts. The liberated individual also plays in the same 
drama with full possession of the truth. There is nothing 
which does not bend to his purposes. " He maketh the 
winds His angels, and the flaming fires His ministers/' 
The philosophical reconciliation of the varying descriptions 
had to wait till a later day. It is possible to eliminate 
the sense of egoism even in this life, and he who achieves 
perfection in this life is called a jivanmukta. His joy of 
immortality realises itself in the freedom of movement. 

The vagueness of the Upaniad doctrines led to the 
development of different theories from the same texts. Some 
Buddhists interpret the Upaniad idea to be an entire loss, 

> Tait, iii. 10. 8. * ii. 22. s lii. 2. 6. iii. I. 3. 



118 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

some Vedintins as the self-immersion of the individual 
soul in the supreme. Others hold that it is an eternal 
existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment 
of the supreme, and not an annihilation. The cry of the 
devotee poet, " I want to eat sugar, and do not want to 
become sugar/ 9 expresses this view. The religious philo- 
sophers of Vainavism and Saivism adopt this standpoint. 
But almost all Indian thinkers are agreed that moka is 
release from birth and death. Union with God is another 
name for becoming eternal. When " eternity " is translated 
into the terms of the phenomenal world, it becomes birth- 
lessness and deathlessness. 



XVIII 

EVIL AND SUFFERING 

The problem of evil is a stumbling-block to all monistic 
systems. The metaphysical problem of the rise of the finite 
has already been dealt with. We are now concerned with 
the question of moral evil. In the Vedic hymns, virtue 
is conformity with the Vedic precepts and vice non-con- 
formity. In the Upaniads knowledge of life eternal is 
virtue and ignorance vice. Conduct expressive of this false 
vision and consequent isolation of self is evil conduct. All 
objects of the world, according to the Upani$ads, are to 
be sought after as gateways to God. If we look upon them 
as solid and secluded, and regard ourselves as separate 
units, then we sin morally. Error is the denial by the 
ego of the supremacy of the whole, or its own assertion of 
self-sufficiency. Evil is the denial in conduct by the ego 
of the supremacy of the whole. Sin is the product of the 
shallow insight, breeding selfish egoism, that hugs its own 
narrowness and shrinks from all sacrifice. The Upaniads 
do not say that evil is illusion or that evil is permanent. 
In either case it will be the duty of man to bow submis- 
sively to it. Evil is unreal in the sense that it is bound to 
be transmuted into good. It is real to the extent that it 
requires effort to transform its nature. 

Sin is making self higher than God, while holiness is 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 119 

displacing self-consciousness by God-consciousness. Man 
can never cling to evil for all time. It is in a state of 
unstable equilibrium, being opposed to the nature of things. 
Morality, according to the Upaniads, expresses the true 
nature of things. Only the good can ultimately prevail. 
" The true prevails, not the untrue/' l Evil is something 
negative, self-contradictory, a principle of death ; good, 
positive and real, a principle of life. That evil cannot be 
all satisfying is plain from the pathetic unrest of the present 
day world, with all its wealth and luxury and control over 
mechanism. 

There are many passages which emphasise the difficulty 
of attaining Brahman. " He of whom many are not even 
able to hear, whom many, even when they hear of Him, 
do not comprehend ; wonderful is a man when found who 
is able to teach Him the self, wonderful is he who compre- 
hends Him." * The path that leads to salvation is like 
" the sharp edge of a razor, difficult to cross and hard to 
tread." 3 The realisation of spirit is not a smooth develop- 
ment or uninterrupted advance. The progress to perfection 
is through pain and suffering. The hard flints must come 
into violent conflict before they can produce the sparks 
of fire. The chick has to undergo the pain of separation 
from the shell before it can reach the intangible light and 
air. Moral conduct seems to go against the grain of things. 
The good and the pleasant are not always conjoined. " The 
good is one thing, the pleasant another. These two have 
different objects and chain a man. It is well with him 
who chooses the good. He who chooses the pleasant misses 
his end." * Pleasure seems to lie in the satisfaction of the 
natural impulse, and the good requires the taming of the 
forces of nature. Man in the moral scheme seems to be 
seeking the true self which he has somehow missed. But 
until the true self is realised, the moral law assumes the 
form of an external compulsion. The good does not seem 
to be the pleasant. Morality implies a wrestling with the 
lower tendency, the pursuit of which appears pleasant. 
When man struggles to free himself from his natural 

t Murfaka, iii. i. 6. * Katha, i. a. 7; B.G., ii. 39, 

$ Ibid., i. 3* <4* * &>&' * * * 



180 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

entanglements, life becomes intense with strife. Suffering is 
the condition of progress. Struggle is the law of existence 
and sacrifice the principle of evolution. The more the 
struggle and sacrifice, the greater are the joy and the 
freedom. All progress has this destructive side. Every 
gain in spirit involves a loss in nature. But the loss is 
not a real loss. Were it real and absolute, then the loss 
would be a dead loss and we could not afford it. Suffering 
is the ransom the son of man has to pay if he would attain 
his crown. It reveals to us the incomplete nature of the 
self and the world. " It is good for me that I have been 
afflicted/' says the Psalmist : for suffering is the messenger 
of God revealing to us the imperfection of the world, the 
episodic nature of earthly life. The discipline of suffering 
has also its use in the education of the spirit. Resistance 
drives the soul to put forth its whole strength, and thus 
compels it to grow. The darker the sky the brighter will 
the stars shine. Suffering cannot be abolished so long as 
spiritual life has to be lived under human conditions. Until 
the whole being is made an offering to God, the process of 
gradual rise through suffering cannot cease. " Man verily 
is the sacrifice," says the Upaniad. x Life is a perpetual 
dying till we are face to face with God. Life is a place 
of torment, where the human spirit writhes to possess the 
eternal. Veil after veil is to be withdrawn. The illusions 
of life are to be torn away and our cherished dreams dis- 
persed before the life divine can be reached. 

XIX 

KARMA 

The law of karma is the counter-part in the moral world 
of the physical law of uniformity. It is the law of the 
conservation of moral energy. The vision of law and order 
is revealed in the Rta of the Rg-Veda. According to 
the principle of karma there is nothing uncertain or capricious 
in the moral world. 4 We reap what we sow. The good 

< a**., iii. 16. i. 

* Carlyte puts this principle thus : " Fool I thinkest thou that because 
ao Boswell it there to note thy jargon, it therefore dies and is buried ? 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 121 

seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil. Every tittle 
action has its effect on character. Man knows that some 
of the tendencies to action which now exist in him are the 
result of conscious or intelligent choice on his part. Con- 
scious actions tend to become unconscious habits, and not 
unnaturally the unconscious tendencies we find in ourselves 
were regarded as the result of past conscious actions. We 
cannot arrest the process of moral evolution any more 
than we can stay the sweep of the tides or the course of 
the stars. The attempt to overleap the law of karma is 
as futile as the attempt to leap over one's shadow. It is 
the psychological principle that our life carries within it 
a record that time cannot blur or death erase. To remedy 
the defects of the old Vedic idea, that redemption from 
sin could be had by sacrifices to gods, great emphasis is 
laid on the law of karma. It proclaims the awful doom, 
the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Not through sacrifices, 
but through good deeds does a man become good. " A 
man becomes good by good deeds and bad by bad deeds." z 
Again, " Man is a creature of will. According as he believes 
in this world, so will he be when he is departed/' * So 
we are asked to will the good and do the good. " What- 
ever world he covets by his mind, and whatever objects 
he wishes, for the man of pure mind, he gains those worlds 
and those objects ; therefore let him who longs for bhuti, 
manifested power, worship him who knows the Atman." 3 
The requital of action makes saihsara with birth and death, 
beginningless and endless. The karma theory embraces 
in its sweep men and gods, animals and plants. 

Since the sense of individual responsibility is emphasised, 
there are critics who think that the karma doctrine is in- 
consistent with social service. It is said that there is no 
emphasis on the bearing of one another's burdens. As a 
matter of fact, the Upaniads hold that we can be free 
from karma only by social service. So long as we perform 

Nothing diet, nothing can die. The idlest word thon speakest is a seed cast 
into time, which brings forth fruit to all eternity." " Be not deceived ; 
God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap '* 
(Gal. vi. 7). 

Brh., iii, 2. 13. * Chan., iii. 14. i. See also Brh., iv. 4. 5. 

Chin., iii. x. to. 



122 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

selfish work we are subject to the law of bondage* When 
we perform disinterested work we reach freedom. " White 
thus you live there is no way by which karma dings to 
you/' l What binds us to the chain of birth and death 
is not action as such but selfish action. In an age when 
the individual was ever ready to shirk responsibility for 
what he did by throwing the burden on providence or stars 
or some other being than his own self, the doctrine of karma 
urged that a man " fetters himself by himself, like a bird 
by its nest." a What looms over us is no dark fate but 
our own past. We are not the victims of a driving doom* 
Suffering is the wages of sin. There is no question that 
such an idea is a great incentive to good conduct. It only 
says that there are some limiting conditions of human 
action. We did not make ourselves. When we come up 
against the impossible, we realise that we cannot do any- 
thing we please. Karma rightly understood does not dis- 
courage moral effort, does not fetter, the mind or chain the 
will. It only says that every act is the inevitable outcome 
of the preceding conditions. There is a tendency of the 
cause to pass into the effect. If the spirit, which is on a 
higher plane than nature, does not assert its freedom, past 
conduct and present environment will account completely 
for the actions of man. Man is not a mere product of 
nature. He is mightier than his karma. If the law 
is all, then there is no real freedom possible. Man's life 
is not the working of merely mechanical relations. There 
are different levels the mechanical, the vital, the sentient, 
the intellectual and the spiritual these currents cross and 
recross and inter-penetrate each other. The law of karma, 
which rules the lower nature of man, has nothing to 
do with the spiritual in him. The infinite in man helps 
him to transcend the limitations of the finite. The essence 
of spirit is freedom. By its exercise man can check and 
control his natural impulses. That is why his life is some- 
thing more than a succession of mechanically determined 
states. His acts to be free must not be expressive of the 
mere force of habit or shock of circumstance, but of the 
freedom of the inner soul. The spiritual nature is the basis 

' lift, ii. * Maitrftyatf Up,, iii. 2, 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE tJPANISADS 128 

of his initiative and endeavour. The mechanical part is 
under constraint. Were man merely the sum of natural 
conditions, he would be completely subject to the law of 
karma. But there is a soul in him which is the master. 
Nothing external can compel it. We are sure that the 
material forces of the world must bend to the spiritual 
rule, and so can the law of karma be subjected to the freedom 
of spirit. Man can have the highest freedom only when he 
becomes one with God. " He who departs from this world, 
without having known the soul or those true desires, his 
part in all worlds is a life of constraint. But he who departs 
from this world after having known the soul and those true 
desires, his part in all worlds is a life of freedom." * Becoming 
one with God is the attainment of the highest freedom. 
The more we live in the presence of God, the more we assert 
the rights of spirit, the more free we are ; the more we lose 
our grip on the whole to which we belong, the more selfish 
we are, the more is our bondage to karma. Man oscillates 
between nature and spirit, and so is subject to both freedom 
and necessity. 

Karma has a cosmic as well as a psychological aspect. 
Every deed must produce its natural effect in the world; 
at the same time it leaves an impression on or forms a 
tendency in the mind of man. It is this tendency or saihs- 
kira or vasana that inclines us to repeat the deed we have 
once done. So all deeds have their fruits in the world 
and effects on the mind. So far as the former are concerned, 
we cannot escape them, however much we may try. But 
in regard to mental tendencies we can control them. Our 
future conduct holds all possibilities. By self-discipline we 
can strengthen the good impulses and weaken the bad ones. 

The actions of men are capable of prediction and pre- 
calculation. If rational, they will show certain properties : 
we shall detect in them an inward coherence, an unselfish 
purpose, and so on. But from that we cannot assume 
that the acts are determined in any mechanical sense. 
Every living soul is potentially free. His acts are not a 
mere unwinding of the thread from a reel. Man possesses 
freedom as the focus of spiritual life. God has not granted 

' Chin., viii. x. 6. 



124 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

him freedom from outside. He possesses freedom because 
he is rooted in God. The more he realises his true divine 
nature, the more free is he. 

It is sometimes argued that the law of karma is incon- 
sistent with theism. 1 Karma is a blind unconscious prin- 
ciple governing the whole universe. It is not subject to 
the control even of God. We do not require a judge to 
administer a mechanical law. The principle of karma is 
not inconsistent with the reality of the absolute Brahman. 
The moral law of karma is the expression of the nature 
of the absolute. Anthropomorphically we can say a 
divine power controls the process. Rta is the law in 
the Vedas. Varuna is the lord of Rta. Karma refers to 
the unchanging action of the gods. 9 It is an expres- 
sion of the nature of reality. It renders impossible 
any arbitrary interference with moral evolution. The 
same conclusion is arrived at by modern theories of 
scientific law and habit, which are irreconcilable with cap- 
ricious interference. If miracles are necessary to prove God, 
then science has killed God for all time. Divine interference 
is regulated by laws. God does not act by private volitions, 
as Malebranche would say. Only the karma theory can 
give us a just conception of the spiritual universe. It 
brings out the living rational nature of the whole. It is 
the mechanism by which spirit works. The freedom of 
the spiritual world is expressed in the world of nature by 
the iron law of mechanical necessity. 3 Freedom and karma 
are the two aspects of the same reality. If God is immanent 
in the cosmos, then His spirit resides in the machine. The 
divine expresses itself in law, but law is not God. The 

See MacNicol : Indian Theism , p. 225. * Dev&nam dhrnv&ni vratftni. 

s We need not oppose the law of karma to the will of God as conceived 
in the Upanisads. The two are not exclusive of each other. Should there 
be many gods as in the Vedic theory, the gods themselves will be subject 
to karma. " The Gods cannot save even a man whom they love when the 
dread fate of death lays hold upon him. Zeus himself laments that it 
is ' fate ' that his son Sarpedon, dearest to him of all men, must die at the 
hands of Patroclus. He ' does not venture to undo what fate decrees.* 
It is impossible even for a God to avoid the fate that is ordained. ' What 
it ordained/ says Athena in Euripides, using Anaadmander's word, 'if 
master of the Gods and the*. " Comferd : From Region to Philosophy, 
pp, M. 13. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 125 

Greek fate, the Stoic reason, and the Chinese Tao, are 
different names for the primary necessity of law. 

There is no doctrine that is so valuable in life and con- 
duct as the karma theory. Whatever happens to us in 
this life we have to submit in meek resignation, for it is the 
result of our past doings. Yet the future is in our power, 
and we can work with hope and confidence. Karma inspires 
hope for the future and resignation to the past. It makes 
men feel that the things of the world, its fortunes and failures, 
do not touch the dignity of the soul. Virtue alone is good, 
not rank or riches, not race or nationality. Nothing but 
goodness is good. 

XX 

FUTURE LIFE 

In the Upaniads we find an advance on the Vedic 
and the Brahmanical conceptions of future life, though 
there is not yet any consistent theory about it. It is the 
idea of rebirth that is the prominent one in the Upaniads. 
The earliest form of this idea occurs in the Satapatha Brah- 
mana, where the notion of being born again after death 
and dying repeatedly is coupled with that of retribution. 
It is said that those who have right knowledge and perform 
their duties are born again after death for immortality, 
while those who do not have such knowledge and neglect 
their duties are reborn again and again, becoming the 
prey of death. 1 The Brahmaria assumes births and deaths 
only in the next world. In the Upaniads the belief is 
transformed into the doctrine of rebirth in the world. We 
cannot say that the two have been reconciled. Sometimes 
we find them together. Good and evil actions experience 
a two-fold retribution, once in the other world and again 
by a renewed life on earth. It is said that the soul, after 
it has journeyed to heaven in radiant form on the burning 
of the corpse, returns thence immediately through the 
three regions to a new existence.* There are evidences 
that the belief in rebirth was only being matured in the 

* Cf. The conception of punarmrtyu. Kau#taki BrfUimaga, xxv. i. 

Bfh., vi. 2.. 14. 



196 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

time of the Upani$ads, since some passages of the Upanijads 
are not familiar with it. 1 The earliest passages incorporating 
the belief of rebirth are ChSndogya, v. 3. 10, and Brhadinuj- 
yaka, vi. 2. 

That the highest kind of immortality is becoming one 
with Brahman is dearly enunciated in the Upaniads. 
When Gods were the supreme realities, freedom lay in union 
with them. Now Brahman is the first principle of things 
and the ultimate basis of the world. So life eternal is 
union with Brahman. When we fall short of our highest 
freedom, we are bound down in the sphere of time and 
are hurried from one state of being into another. The 
undelivered soul is subject to the law of birth and death, 
and has to work out its destiny by lives on earth. While 
true immortality is for the liberated, survival in time is 
for the bound. We hear the prayer, " May I never go to 
the white, toothless, devouring abode." * The kind of birth 
depends on the nature of the work done. It is called 
heaven when the individual lifts himself up to a higher life, 
and hell when he throws himself down into a lower one 
This existence in saihsara is not the true existence of the 
soul. We have to bear the servitude of saihsSra so long 
as the finite elements cling to us. With the finite we can 
never reach the absolute, however near we may come to it. 
Progress is a ceaseless growth or perpetual approximation. 
When the finite element is completely given up, then one- 
ness with God is realised, and there is no return to saihsara. 3 
SamsSra is intended to discipline the spirit. 

The world of nature reveals to us how all things on earth 
are impermanent and unreal. We find in it recurrent 
death and rebirth of all things. " Like corn decays the 
mortal, like corn is he born again/' 4 In destruction we 
find only the precursor of renewed existence. Death is 
only the gate of life. Though the law of karma is not yet 
committed to any precise equivalence between merit and 
experience, still it is asserted that the nature of the birth 
depends on the conduct of man. "Those whose conduct 
has been good will quickly attain some good birth, the birth 

* Bj-h., i. 5. 16. Chin. vili. 14. i, 

i Chan., iv. 16. 6* 4 Katha, i* 8. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 127 

of a Bribmin, a Katriya or a VaiSya. But those whose 
conduct is evil will quickly attain an evil birth, the birth 
of a hog, or dog, or a ca$4la." x 

Between one life and another there is a persisting identity, 
though our consciousness may not testify to it. This is 
not a great weakness, since large portions of human life 
tend sometimes to be forgotten. The theory is concerned 
more with the conservation of values than with the con- 
tinuance of consciousness. Since the Brahman which is 
the universal soul is not subject to bondage, that which 
persists from birth to birth is said to be what a man does 
or his karma. " Does the soul survive bodily death ? 
Yajnavalkya, if after the death of the man his spirit goes 
into fire, his breath into wind, his eyes into the sun, his 
mind into the moon, his ear into the directions of space, 
his body into the earth, his self into the ether, the hair 
of his body into plants, the hair of his head into trees, the 
blood and semen into water what then becomes of the 
man ? " is the question put by Artabhaga to Yajnavalkya. 
They arrive at the conclusion, " verily one becomes good 
through good deeds, evil through evil deeds/' * The reality 
of life is character, not body or mind. It survives the 
disruption of death. The Upaniads hold that while 
karma changes, the universal self endures. If with some 
Buddhists we dismiss Brahman as useless, we shall have 
to say that only karma persists. 

There id no mention of animals in the teaching of Yajna- 
valkya, which ends with the fourth book of the Bj-hada- 
ragyaka Upaniad, though in some later passages of the 
same Upaniad,3 as well as in the Chandogya, Kauitaki, 
etc., the migration into animal bodies is also mentioned. 
The idea may have been derived from the beliefs of the 
aboriginal tribes. In almost all regions of the world the 
untutored savage thought that human souls could pass into ' 
animal bodies. The Aryan invaders, in their commerce 
with the original inhabitants of India, came across the 
notion that animals and plants possessed souls, and human 
souls sometimes took their dwelling in them. The holiness 
of life in all things, the equality of origin in the flower, the 

* Chin., v. to. 7. Bfh., iii. a. 13. s vi. 3. 16. 



18$ PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 

insect, the animal and the man were the fundamental ideas 
of the Upani^ads, which betrayed them into an acceptance 
of this position. It has also great practical value. The 
tenderness shown to animals in the a dramas of the forests 
favoured the doctrine. Proud man was required to get 
rid of his snobbery and exclusiveness, and admit with the 
humility of a St. Francis that the black beetle was his brother. 
This is not strange when we think of the modern theories 
of evolution and their emphasis on the dose affinity between 
men and animals. 

No philosophy could discard its past. The Upaniad 
theory of future life had to reckon with 'the old Vedic 
doctrine of rewards and punishments in another world. 
The conservative spirit of man tried to combine the new 
idea of rebirth with the earlier eschatology, which spoke 
of the joyous world of the spirits of the dead where Yama 
presided and the joyless regions of darkness. This led to 
a complication of the Upaxuad theory, which had to dis- 
tinguish three ways after death. " For we have heard 
even the saying of a r$i, ' I heard of two paths for men, 
one leading to the fathers, the other leading to the devas. 
On those paths all that lives, moves on, whatever there 
is between father Sky and mother Earth/ " * The Upani- 
ads mention the two paths by which a departed soul 
proceeds to enjoy the fruits of its karma done in its life- 
time on earth. One is called the devaySna or the axcimSrga, 
the path of light, and the other pitjySna or the dhumamSrga, 
the path of darkness. The former leads to the plane of 
Brahma or satyaloka, through the different spheres of Agni, 
etc. From this there is no return. DevaySna had a 
meaning so long as Brahma was looked upon as an objective 
being, seated on a high throne in his own palace, to which 
the good went. But when the identity of self Und Brah- 
*man is reached, the throne of Brahma totters and devaySna 
becomes the pathway to the oneness with the highest. The 
pitrySna takes to candraloka or the region of the moon 
through the different spheres of smoke, night, etc. He who 
goes to the devaySna does not come back to this world, 
but he who goes to the pitjyana, after enjoying the fruits 

vi. 2. a. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 129 

of his good acts, comes back to the earth. There are many 
differences in detail. According to the Kau!taki, all go 
to the moon after death, though from the moon a few go 
by the path of the fathers to BrahmS, while others return 
to the various forms of existence, ranging from man to 
worm, according to the quality of their work and degree 
of knowledge. 1 The devayana and pit jy ana correspond 
to the Jdngdom of light and the kingdom of darkness 
or ajfiina, which involves us in samsara. A third path 
leading to the joyless regions enveloped in darkness 
is also mentioned. 2 " Those who make a gift of barren 
cows, which have drunk water and eaten hay and given 
their milk, themselves go to the joyless regions." 3 This 
is the third road on which creatures which live and die, 
worms, insects, creeping things crawl. 4 The freed man who 
realises his identity with Brahman need not go anywhere 
for his salvation. 5 Even where he is, he enjoys Brahman. 
" His pranas do not go anywhere. Being Brahman he is 
merged in Brahman." 6 Those who realise freedom do not 
go through any path, but those who have to reach it by 
an ascent go through the devayana. Since a gradual ascent 
is described, it is said to be the path of kramamukti. 

The mechanism of rebirth is explained in different ways. 
" Then his knowledge and his works and his previous ex- 
perience take him by the hand. As a caterpillar which 
has wriggled to the top of a blade of grass draws itself over 
to a new blade, so does the man after he has put aside his 
body draw himself over to a new existence." 7 Again : 
" As a goldsmith taking a piece of gold forms another shape 
with it, more new and agreeable, so throwing off this body 
and obtaining that state of knowledge, the soul forms a 
shape which is more new and agreeable, suited to the world." 
" As the sculptor takes the material from a statue and chisels 
therefrom another, newer, fairer form, so this soul also, 
after it has taken off the body and rid itself of ignorance, 

1 i. 2. 3. Brh. t iv. n. s Katha, iii. 3. 

4 Brh., vi. 2. 16. We meet with similar traditions in the Gnostic 
writings as well as in St. Paul. See Harrison: Prolegomena to Greek Religion; 
and Gardner: The Religious Experiences of St. Paul. 

I Katha, 16, 14. * Brh., 4. 4. 6. 7 Brh., iv. 4. 3. 

10 



WO PHILOSOPHY OF THE tTPANIADS 

creates for itself another, newer, fairer form, whether of the 
fathers, of the Gandharvas, or the gods, or Prajipati, or 
Brahmi, or other beings." * It is sometimes said that the 
soid at death gathers into itself the vital spirits and departs, 
taking them all to another body, exalted or not according to 
the deeds done in the body it has left. 2 This view is developed 
in the later doctrines into the conception of a liftga garira, 
made familiar to western readers by theosophists as the 
astral body. This subtle body serves as the vehicle of mind 
and character, and is not disintegrated with the death of 
the physical body. It forms the basis of a new physical 
body which it moulds upon itself, effecting as it were a 
materialisation maintained throughout the next life. It is 
also said that the creatures emerge into individual life 
from the one true being and merge into it again. 3 

The thinkers of the Upaniads do not support the 
materialistic view that the soul is annihilated at death. 
They have a strong conviction of the continuity of life, and 
maintain that there is something which survives bodily 
death. The sexual act creates the conditions in which a new 
life appears, but it is, on no account, an adequate explana- 
tion of the new life itself. The birth of consciousness cannot 
be explained by the development of a cell. The theological 
hypothesis that God creates a new soul every time a child 
is born does not seem to be more satisfactory than the 
Upaniad theory that the individual jiva is manifesting itself 
in the germ and assuming the shape that it is obliged to take. 

The theory of rebirth is quite as logical as any other 
hypothesis that is in the field, and is certainly more satis- 
factory than the theories of absolute annihilation or eternal 
retribution. It accounts for the apparent moral disorder 
and chaos of suffering. The unfair distribution of pain 
seems to contradict the rationality of the universe* As 
irregularities of the empirical world are a challenge to the 
logical faith, so moral disorder is a challenge to the belief 
in the goodness of the principle at work. If our faith is 
rational, there cannot be any intellectual or moral confusion. 

* Bfh., iv. 4. 4. See also Chin., v. 10. 2 ; Kftutftaki, i. 2 ; Bfh. L 5. 16, 
See Bj-h., iv. i. 6 ; P*a*na. i. 9* 16 ;&">; Kautftaki, iii. 3. 
l Chan., vi. 9. 2 ; vi. to. i. 2. 



PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 181 

If moral chaos is ultimate, then moral paralysis would be 
the result. We have to reconcile the strangely chaotic 
appearances of the moral world with the faith in a good 
and great God. We should not be content with thinking 
that the world is organised in a haphazard manner. The 
hypothesis which traces the disorder and the suffering of 
the moral world to the freedom of man cannot account for 
the inequalities with which men are thrust into the world. 
These differences in the initial equipment contradict the 
idea of a divinely ordered universe. This hypothesis of 
rebirth gives us some explanation of the original difference. 
It makes us feel that the joy and suffering of the world are 
there for the progressive education of character. Punish- 
ment is not only vindictive but also remedial. We are 
punished for our sins, and are at the same time purified by 
punishment. It is good that we suffer. 

The question of the origin of the hypothesis of rebirth we 
have answered by anticipation. We have seen how it arises 
naturally from the mass of thought by which the Upani$ad 
thinkers were surrounded. The Vedas speak to us of the 
two ways of the gods and the fathers. The original in- 
habitants of India supply us with the idea of the migration 
of human souls into trees and animals. The need for 
recompense is urged in the Brahmarias. With these ready 
to hand, the Upaniads had only to round them off into the 
doctrine of sariisara. We are not therefore obliged to seek 
for it any independent source. If in ancient Greece we find 
doctrines similar to it, they may have had independent origin 
and growth, though modern scholarship is against such 
a view. On this question we may quote two authorities 
on Indian and Greek thought. Macdonell observes that 
the " dependence of Pythagoras on Indian philosophy and 
science certainly seems to have a high degree of probability. 
The doctrine of metempsychosis in the case of Pythagoras 
appears without any connexion or explanatory background, 
and was regarded by the Greeks as of foreign origin. He 
could not have derived it from Egypt as it was not known 
to the ancient Egyptians." x Gomperz writes : " There is 
a far closer agreement between Pythagorism and the Indian 

* History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 42** 



182 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

doctrine, not merely in their general features, but even m 
certain details such as vegetarianism ; and it may be added 
that the formulae which summarise the whole creed of the 
circle and the wheel of births are likewise the same in both. 
It is almost impossible for us to refer this identity to mere 
chance. ... It is not too much to assume that the curious 
Greek who was the contemporary of Buddha, and it may 
have been of Zarathustra too, would have acquired a more 
or less exact knowledge of the religious speculations of the 
East, in that age of intellectual fermentation, through the 
medium of Persia/' x One thing is clear that the Indians 
did not borrow it from outside. 



XXI 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UPANISADS 

Though there is no systematic psychological analysis 
in the Upaniads, we can gather from them the ideas 
which they adopted. In the PraSna Upaniad, a the ten 
indriyas, the five organs of action and the five senses of know- 
ledge, the motor and the sensory apparatus are mentioned. 
These indriyas work under the control of manas, the central 
organ whose chief functions are perception and action. 
Without mind the senses are useless.3 That is why the 
mind is called the chief of the senses. Without mind or 
prajni, speech does not make known anything. " My mind 
was absent," he says. " I did not perceive that world ; 
without prajfiS, the eye does not make known any form." 4 
" I was absent in mind, I did not see ; I was absent in mind, 
I did not hear ; in this manner it is evident that a person 
sees with the mind, hears with the mind." 5 The mind 
was looked upon as material in nature. 6 For sense, per- 
ception, therefore, the Upaniads make out thaty)*ai' ip 
necessary is neither the mere sensq nor its mere ^p^nKaing, 
but a self which perceives through the sense, a seeing eye. 

> Grtak Thinkers, vol. i., p. 127. For a different view, see Keith on 
Pythagoras and Transmigration, J.R.A.S., 1909. iv. 2. **JNL 

i Brh.. i. 5- 3- . Kautftaki. * 5 Brh,, iii. U *$> 

* Professor Alexander reduces mind to a particular reality as mam*! 
in structure as the electron of the physicist. " , 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 188 

Perception is said to be due to the proximity of the senses to 
their objects. 1 One can do only one mental act at a time. 1 
Buddhi or intelligence is higher than manas. The functions of 
buddhi are found in the Aitareya. " Sensation, perception, 
ideation, conception, understanding, insight, resolution, 
opinion, imagination, feeling, memory, volition, conation, the 
will to live, desire and self-control, all these are different names 
of intellection." 3 This analysis cannot stand criticism, but 
is important, since it indicates that even so early as the 
period of the Upaniads there were psychological discus- 
sions. The highest of all is the soul which is the eye of 
the eye, the ear of the ear. It controls buddhi, manas, 
the indriyas, the pranas, etc. 4 It is known to be all-per- 
vasive and absolute. 5 There are passages where the soul 
is given physical properties and said to dwell in the cavity 
of the heart. 6 It is also said to be of the size of a grain 
of barley or rice,? of the measure of a span, 8 or the thumb.9 
If we remember that Aristotle in his DC Anima located the 
soul in the heart and Galen in the brain, and Descartes 
imagined the seat of the soul to be the pineal gland, and 
Lotze the brain, it is not surprising that the psycho- 
logists of the Upaniads located it in the region of the 
heart. 

The mind is wider than consciousness. That conscious-^ 
ness is only one aspect of mental life, a state of our spiritual 
world, and not that world itself, is a profound truth, which 
western thought is slowly coming to recognise. Since the 
time of Leibniz consciousness is admitted to be only an 
accident of mental representation, and not its necessary 
and essential attribute. His contention that " our inner 
world is richer, ampler and more concealed/' was well known 
to the writers of the Upaniads. 

* Compare the views of Empedocles and Democritus on the point. 
> Kaotltaki, iii. 2. 3 iii. 2. 

4 Bra., iv. 4 5 ; i. 4. 17 ; v. 6 , ii. i. 17 ; iii. 7. 22 ; iv. 3. 7 ; iv. 5. 13. 

5 Katha, i. 2. 21 ; Mwrfaka, i. i. 6. 

* Brh., iv. 3. 17 ; v. 6 ; Chan., viii. 3. 3 ; v. i. 6 ; Katha, ii. 20 ; iii. x ; 
iv, 6 ; vi. 18 ; and vet&vatara, iii. n. 20. Hfdaya or hrtpadma is a subtle 
o6&\ie of the spinal cord. 

t Bfh., v. 6. i ; Chn., iii. 14. 3. * Chin., v. 18. i, 

Katha. vi. 17 ; ii. 21 ; gvet., iii. 13. 



184 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

The Mijujukya Upaniad mentions the different con- 
ditions of the soul, waking, dreaming, sleep and the intuitive 
turiya. In the waking condition the manas and the sense 
organs are all active. In dream states the senses are said 
to be quiescent and lost in the manas, a proposition which 
modern psychology disputes. But according to the Upani- 
$ads, so long as our sense organs are active, we are only 
dozing, but not dreaming. We are in a half-waking condition. 
In authentic dream states the mind alone operates in a 
free and unfettered manner. The difference between the 
waking and the dream states consists in this, that in the 
waking condition the mind depends on the outward im- 
pressions, while in dreaming it creates its impressions and 
enjoys them. It may, of course, use the materials of the 
waking hours. Suupti, or deep sleep, is also a normal 
occurrence of man's life. In it the mind and the senses 
are both said to be inactive. There is a cessation of the 
empirical consciousness with its distinction of object and 
subject. It is said that in this state we have an objectless 
consciousness when the self attains to a temporary union 
with the absolute. Be that as it may, it is clear that it 
is not complete non-being or negation. It is difficult to 
concede that the self continues to exist in deep sleep, en- 
joying bliss though it is bereft of all experience. As a 
matter of fact, the Upaniads themselves account for the 
physiological and unconscious activities by the principle 
of life, " prSna," which is said to govern the processes of 
breathing, circulation, etc. Perhaps organic memory may be 
the explanation of the continuity of consciousness. Notwith- 
standing the absence of cognition, it is open to question 
whether the self in the condition of sleep experiences positive 
bliss. Turiya is the consciousness of unity, though not the 
empirical apprehension thereof. It is the mystic realisation 
of the oneness of all, which is the crown of spiritual life. 

Before we take up the question of the non-Ved5ntic 
tendencies of the Upani$ads, it may be well to sum up 
the general metaphysical standpoint of the Upani$ads. 
At the very start we said that there was considerable am- 
biguity in the position of the Upani$ads, making it liable 
td different interpretations. It is difficult to decide whether 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANJSADS 185 

it is the Advaita (or non-dualism) of Samkara, or the modified 
position of RamSnuja that is the final teaching of the parent 
gospel. Tendencies which could be completed in either 
direction are to be met with. The Upani$ads are not con* 
scious of any contradiction between them. The advaitic 
(non-dual) Brahman reached by intuition and the concretely 
defined reality are not really distinct, since they are only 
two different ways of representing the same. They are 
the intuitional and the intellectual ways of apprehending, 
the same reality. On the former view the world is an 
appearance of the absolute ; to the latter it is an expression 
of God. In neither case is the world to be dismissed as alto- 
gether unreal or illusory, since on such a view we cannot admit 
of any distinctions of value in the world of experience. 
Through the influence of Buddhism and its schools, the non- 
dual nature of reality and the phenomenal nature of the world 
came to be emphasised in the systems of Gaudapada and 
Samkara. As a matter of fact, such an advaitic philosophy 
seems to be only a revised version of the Midhyamika 
metaphysics in Vedic terminology. The religious recon- 
struction of the epics and the Bhagavadgita and the theistic 
emphasis in the Nyaya, led to the development of the 
Vi&t Stdvaita, or modified monism of Ramnuja. As a 
matter of fact, the non-dualists or Advaitins are called 
Pari&uddha Saugatas, or purified Buddhists, and the Viit5d- 
vaitins PariSuddha Naiyayikas, or purified NySya followers. 

XXII 
ELEMENTS OF SAMKHYA AND YOGA IN THE UPANISADS 

There are germs of non-Ved5ntic philosophies such as 
S&xhkhya and Yoga in the Upani$ads. The Samkhya 
philosophy establishes a dualism between purua and 
prakfti, where prakfti is the source of all existence and 
purua the disinterested spectator of the evolution of 
prakrti. It also holds to the plurality of puruas or 
knowing subjects. 1 The Upaniads do not support the 

* The idea of an avyakta or prakrti, the source of all differentiation, is 
distinctly suggested in the Upani^ads. " Beyond the senses are the rudi- 
ments of its objects ; beyond these rudiments is the mind ; beyond the 



186 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

theory of a plurality of puruas, though a natural process 
of criticism and development of one side of the doctrine 
leads to it. We have seen how the monism of the Upamjads 
becomes a monotheism so far as the purposes of religion 
are concerned. A monotheism implies the separate existence 
of the individual soul over against the supreme soul. The 
result is a plurality of individual souls. But the S&hkhya 
theorists had the insight to perceive that the independence 
of the supreme and the individual souls is hard to maintain. 
One is subversive of the other. One of them, either the 
supreme or the individual souls, had to be cancelled. When 
the function of productivity was assigned to prakjti, God 
became superfluous. The Upaniads protest against the 
transfer of creative functions to mere matter divorced from 
God. Their main tendency is to support the hypothesis 
t>f an absolute spirit on the background of which subject 
and object arise. 1 

The beginnings of the Yoga system are to be found in 
the Upaniads. It is the conviction of the Upani$ad 
writers that reality is not rightly perceived by our imperfect 
understandings. The mind of man is compared by them 
to a mirror in which reality is reflected. The extent to 
which we know reality depends on the state of our mind, 
whether it can respond to the full wealth of reality or not. 
Colours are not revealed to the blind nor music to the deaf, 
nor philosophic truth to the feeble-minded. The process 
of knowing is not so much a creation as a discovery, not 

mind is Atman known as mahat (great), beyond the mahat is avyakta, the 
unmaaifested ; beyond the avyakta is the purusa, beyond the purusa 
there is nothing." (Katha, m. 10. n , see also vi 7. 8.) Beyond the indeter- 
minate whence all creation issues there is only God. " By tapas Brahman 
increases in size and from it food is produced , from food life, mind, the 
elements, the worlds, karma, and with it its fruits." (Muntfaka, i. i.) 
Food or annam in this passage is interpreted by &axhkara as the unmani- 
ferted (avyakrtam). In the Pralna Upanisad, iv., we have an account of 
how all things are resolved into the imperishable in the order of the five 
elements with the corresponding m&tras or subtle elements. See Prafoa, 
iv. 8. In the Upanisads prakrti is said to be derived from God. The word 
" Purusa " means the supreme Atman. The Samkhya theory of punisa as 
a passive witness may have been suggested by the famous passage about the 
two birds, " where the one feed* on the delicious fruit and the other, not 
tatting it, look* on." (Muntfaka, hi. i I.) 

i See Aitareya, i. x. 2 ; Brh., i. 4. 3 ; Chan,, vi. a, 6 ; Tait, ii, I. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE tJPANISADS 187 

so much a production as a revelation. It follows that the 
revelation will be imperfect or distorted, if there is any taint 
or imperfection clinging to the instrument. The selfish 
desires and passions get between the instrument of mind 
and the reality to be revealed* When the personality of 
the subject affects the nature of the instrument, the reflection 
becomes blurred. The ignorance of the observer clouds 
the object with his fancies. His prevailing prejudices are 
cast over the truth of things. Error is just the intrusion 
into the reality of the defects of the instrument. An im- 
partial and impersonal attitude is necessary for the discovery 
of truth, and all that is merely personal impedes this process. 
We must be saved from the malformation and the mis- 
carriage of our minds. The clamant energies of the mind 
must be bent to become the passive channels for the trans- 
mission of truth. The Yoga method gives directions how 
to refine the mind and improve the mirror, keep it clean 
by keeping out what is peculiar to the individual. It is 
only through this discipline that we can rise to that height 
of strenuous impersonality from which the gifted souls of the 
world see distant visions. This method is in consonance with 
the Upaniad theory of the self. Our ordinary conscious- 
ness turns its back on the eternal world and is lost in the 
perishing unreal world cast by the mind out of sense im- 
pressions. When we rise above the empirical self we get 
not a negation but an intensification of self. When the 
self is bound down to its empirical accidents, its activities 
are not fully exercised. When the limitations of empirical 
existence are transcended, the universal life is intensified, 
and we have an enrichment of self or enhancement of 
personality. Then it draws all experience into it. In the 
lower stages, when the self is identified with any definite 
centre generated by the accidents of time and space, the 
world of experience is not made its own. The adherence 
to a narrow circle of experience must be overcome before 
we can gather into ourselves the world of experience, whose 
centre as well as circumference is God and man. Then 
we rise to a condition in which, in the words of the Upani- 
$ads, " there is no difference between what is within and 
what is without." The Yoga method insists that the false 



188 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 

outward outlook must be checked before the true inward 
ideal is given a chance of life and expression. We must 
cease to live in the world of shadows before we can lay 
hold of the eternal life. 

The Yoga system requires us to go through a course of 
mental and spiritual discipline. The Upaniads also em- 
phasise the practice of austere virtues before the end can 
be reached. In the Pra&na Upaniad Pippalada sends 
away six inquirers after God for another year of discipline 
with the command, "Go ye and spend another year in 
leading the life of celibacy (brahmacarya), in practising 
asceticism, in cherishing reverential faith (SraddhS)." The 
life of celibacy, where the student will have no family 
attachment to perturb his mind, would enable him to 
give whole-hearted attention to his work. The penances 
will give him mental quiet and remove the restlessness of 
mind which is such a great obstacle to knowledge. SraddhS, 
or faith is necessary for all work. The essence of Yoga 
philosophy, as of all mystic teaching, is the insistence on 
the possibility of coming into direct contact with the divine 
consciousness by raising the human to a plane above its 
normal level. 

We must control the mind which binds us to outer 
things and makes slaves of us, to realise freedom. Being 
the victims of outer objects and circumstances, we do not 
reach satisfaction. " As rain water that has fallen on a 
mountain ridge runs down on all sides, thus does he who 
sees a difference between qualities run after them on all 
sides. As pure water poured into pure water remains the 
same, thus, O Gautama, is the self of a thinker who knows." x 
The mind of a man who does not know his own self goes 
hither and thither like the water pouring down the crags 
in every direction. But when his mind is purified, he be- 
comes one with the great ocean of life which dwells behind 
all mortal forms. The outward mind, if allowed free scope, 
gets dispersed in the desert sands. The seeker must draw 
it inward, hold it still to obtain the treasure within. We 
have to force utterance into feeling, feeling into thought, 
and thought into universal consciousness; only then do 

* Katha Up., ii, 15. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 189 

we become conscious of the deep peace of the eternal. 1 
Oifly when " the five sources of knowledge are at rest along 
with the mind and the intellect is inactive" do we reach 
the highest. 4 "Having taken the bow furnished by the 
Upaniads, the great weapon, and fixed in it the arrow 
rendered pointed by constant meditation, and having drawn 
it with the mind, fixed on the Brahman, aim happy youth 
at that mark, the immortal Brahman." 3 The Kauitaki 
Upaniad speaks of Pratardana as the founder of a new 
system of self-control or samyamana, which is known by 
the name of the Inner sacrifice. 4 He insists that the in- 
dividual should exercise perfect control over his passions 
and emotions. The Upaniads sometimes suggest that 
we can induce the trance condition by control of breath, 5 
though more often they speak to us of the method of 
concentration. 6 Mystic words such as Aum, Tadvanam,? 
TajjalSn, 8 are the symbols on which we are asked to fix 
attention. The way to reach steadiness of mind is by 
concentration or fixing the thought for a time on one 
particular object by effacing all others. Only practice 
helps us to grow perfect in this art. 

The only indication of the later Nyaya logic occurs in 
Mumjaka.9 " This At man cannot be attained by one devoid 
of strength, or by excitement, or by tapas, or by liAga." 
Liftga, as we shall see, is a technical term of Nyiya logic, 
the binding link, the middle term of inference. 10 The 
empirical theory of knowledge, that the nature of reality 
is to be known by way of induction, is brought out in some 
passages. " By one clod of clay all that is made of clay 
is known ... by one nugget of gold all that is made of 
gold is known." " Pratardana insists that knowledge is 
possible only through a subject-object relation. 

> Katha, 11. 13. Cf. " Thought is best when the mind is gathered into 
herself, and none of these things trouble her neither sounds nor sights nor 
pain, nor any pleasure when she has as little as possible to do with the 
body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being " Plato's 
Pkado. 

Katha, ii. 12. s Mungaka, 11. 2. 2. 

Antaram agnihotram, ii. 5. 5 Brh., i. 5. 23. 

PraSna, v. i. 7 Kena, iv. 6. * Chan , hi. 14. i. 

ili. 2. 4. Deusen and Hume give to the text a different sense. 

Unga link. See also Chan., vi. ^. 4. " Chftri., vi. i 4-6. 



140 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 



XXIII 

PHILOSOPHICAL ANTICIPATIONS 

The Upani$ads determine the main issues of philo- 
sophical inquiry and mark out the lines of subsequent 
philosophical discussion. Apart from suggestions of other 
theories, we have seen that the Upaniads contain the 
elements of a genuine philosophical idealism, insisting on 
the relative reality of the world, the oneness and wholeness 
of spirit, and the need of an ethical and religious life. Though 
the philosophical synthesis presented in the Upani^ads, 
with its fundamental idea of the unity of the consciousness 
of self, with the principle which binds all things, constitutes 
the strength of the Upaniad thought, its weakness lies 
in the fact that this synthesis is achieved not so much by 
explicit reason as by intuition. It does not offer a logical 
reconciliation of the different elements which it brings 
together, though it has a firm hold on the central idea of 
all true philosophy. 

The beliefs of the Vedic religion weighed upon the 
Upaniad thinkers. Though they did not scruple to 
criticise them, they were still hampered by the legacy of 
the past. They tried to be champions of future progress 
as well as devotees of ancient greatness. This was obviously 
a hard task judged from the results. The Upani$ad re- 
ligion, while it preached a pure and spiritual doctrine, which 
had no specified forms of worship, which did not demand 
a priestly hierarchy, yet tolerated these things, nay, even 
recognised them. " The various karmas which seers found 
in the mantras are true, and were much practised in the 
Treta age ; practise them always with true desires ; it is 
your way to the attainment of the fruits of karma/' * 
The Vedic gods had their own place in the sun. None asked 
the people to forsake the gods they were wont to worship. 
Ingenious explanations, suggestions and symbolism helped 
to interpret the old superstition in consistency with the 

> Mujwjak*, i. 2, I, 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 141 

new idealism. While the hour demanded fidelity to the 
spiritual ideal, we find in the Upaniads a good deal of 
temporising. They began as a movement towards the 
liberation of the individual from the shackles of external 
authority and excessive conventionalism. They ended in 
rivetting the old chains. Instead of establishing new values 
for life, they tended to propagate the traditional ones. To 
preach a spiritual democracy is a very different thing from 
establishing it. The Upaniads endeavoured laudably to 
combine a lofty mysticism with the ancestral faith. But 
the age never felt even a living option between the new 
spiritual ideal and the mythologies of the past. The 
lofty idealism of the Upaniads did not realise itself as 
a popular movement. It never influenced society as a 
whole. The sacrificial religion was still the dominating 
force ; the Upaniads only added respectability to it. 
The old faith was inspired with a new vitality derived from 
the breath of a spirit from another sphere If the idealism 
of the Upaniads had permeated the masses, there would 
have been a great remodelling of the racial character and 
a regeneration of social institutions. But neither of these 
things happened. The lower religion with much of super- 
stition prevailed. The priesthood became powerful. The 
conservatism of the religious institutions and contempt 
for the masses lived side by side with a higher spirit adopted 
by a few votaries of the perfect life. It was an age of 
spiritual contradiction and chaos. The teaching of the 
Upani^ads became so flexible as to embrace within it the 
most diverse forms of doctrine from a refined idealism to 
a crude idolatry. The result was that the higher religion 
was swamped by the lower. 

Everywhere we had contradictory notions. In religion, 
there was Vedic polytheism and sacrifices tempered by 
Upaniad monism and spiritual life. In social matters, 
there was caste, the rigours of which were miti ^ 

catholic spirit of universalism. In ejc 
the conception of rebirth mixed up 
But the true was overwhelmed by the 
of the BrShmanical religion, with all its 
soon reached a climax in the post-Il 




142 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 

Buddhist period. This period was one of spiritual dryness, 
where truth hardened into tradition, and morality stiffened 
into routine. Life became a series of observances. The 
mind of man moved within the iron circle of prescribed 
formulas and duties. The atmosphere was choked with 
ceremonialism. One could not wake up or rise from his 
bed, bathe or shave, wash his face, or eat a mouthful,* 
without muttering some formula or observing some rite. 
It was an age when a petty and barren creed set too much 
store by mere trifles and hollow superstitions. An arid 
and heartless philosophy, backed by a dry and dogmatic 
religion, full of affectation and exaggeration, could not 
satisfy the thinking few for any time, or the masses for 
a long time. A period of disintegration followed when 
attempts were made to carry out the Upani$ad revolt 
in a more systematic manner. The illogical combination 
of the Upaniad monism and the Vedic polytheism, the 
Upaniad spiritual life and the Vedic sacrificial routine, 
the Upaniad moka and samsara and the Vedic hell 
and heaven, the Upaniad universalism and the popular 
caste, could no longer live together. Reconstruction was 
the greatest need of the hour. A deeper and more spiritual 
religion which could come down to the common life of man 
was what the times were waiting for. Before a true synthesis 
could be obtained, the elements artificially combined re- 
quired to be torn away from the connection into which 
they have been brought and set in abstract opposition to 
each other. The Buddhists, the Jainas, and the Carvikas 
or materialists pointed to the artificial condition of the 
prevailing religion. The first two attempted a reconstruc- 
tion, emphasising the ethical needs of the spirit. But their 
attempts were on revolutionary lines. While they tried 
to carry out the ethical universalism of the Upaniad 
teaching, they imagined that they completely broke off 
from the authority of the BrShmanical caste, the sacrificial 
system and the prevailing religion. The BhagavadgitS, and 
the later Upaniads tried to reckon with the past and 
bring about a synthesis of the illogical elements in a more 
conservative spirit. It may be that these radical and 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 148 

conservative protests against the religion as it prevailed 
in the post-Upani$ad period were formulated in different 
parts of 'the country, Buddhism and Jainism in the east 
and Bhagavadgiti in the west, the ancient stronghold of 
the Vedic religion. It is to this period of intellectual 
ferment, revolt and reconstruction that we now pass. 



Jr**rf fc Cra* Brit** |y 
VNW1N BftOTHSftS, LIMITED, LONDON AND WOldM* 




GEORGE ALLEN & UNW1N LTD. 

LONDON: 40 MUSBUM STRBBT, W.C.i 

CAP* Town: 73 ST. GSORGB'S STRBBT 

SYDHSY, N.S.W. : 318222 CLARBNCB STREET 

WX-X.LIXGTON, N.Z. : 110112 LAMBTON QUAY