Part 11

The whole third adhyâya indeed of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka affords ample proof of the artificial character of /S/a@nkara's attempts to show that the teaching of the Upanishads follows a definite system. The eighth brâhma/n/a, for instance, is said to convey the doctrine of the highest non-related Brahman, while the preceding brâhma/n/as had treated only of Î/s/vara in his various aspects. But, as a matter of fact, brâhma/n/a 8, after having, in section 8, represented Brahman as destitute of all qualities, proceeds, in the next section, to describe that very same Brahman as the ruler of the world, 'By the command of that Imperishable sun and moon stand apart,' &c.; a clear indication that the author of the Upanishad does not distinguish a higher and lower Brahman in--/S/a@nkara's sense.--The preceding brâhma/n/a (7) treats of the antaryâmin, i.e. Brahman viewed as the internal ruler of everything. This, according to /S/a@nkara, is the lower form of Brahman called Î/s/vara; but we observe that the antaryâmin as well as the so-called highest Brahman described in section 8 is, at the termination of the two sections, characterised by means of the very same terms (7, 23: Unseen but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is no other seer but he, there is no other hearer but he, &c.; and 8, 11: That Brahman is unseen but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is nothing that sees but it, nothing that hears but it, &c.).--Nothing can be clearer than that all these sections aim at describing one and the same being, and know nothing of the distinctions made by the developed Vedânta, however valid the latter may be from a purely philosophic point of view.

We may refer to one more similar instance from the Chândogya Upanishad. We there meet in III, 14 with one of the most famous vidyâs describing the nature of Brahman, called after its reputed author the Sâ/nd/ilya-vidyâ. This small vidyâ is decidedly one of the finest and most characteristic texts; it would be difficult to point out another passage setting forth with greater force and eloquence and in an equally short compass the central doctrine of the Upanishads. Yet this text, which, beyond doubt, gives utterance to the highest conception of Brahman's nature that Sâ/nd/ilya's thought was able to reach, is by /S/a@nkara and his school again declared to form part of the lower vidyâ only, because it represents Brahman as possessing qualities. It is, according to their terminology, not j/ñ/âna, i.e. knowledge, but the injunction of a mere upâsanâ, a devout meditation on Brahman in so far as possessing certain definite attributes such as having light for its form, having true thoughts, and so on. The Râmânujas, on the other hand, quote this text with preference as clearly describing the nature of their highest, i.e. their one Brahman. We again allow that /S/a@nkara is free to deny that any text which ascribes qualities to Brahman embodies absolute truth; but we also again remark that there is no reason whatever for supposing that Sâ/nd/ilya, or whoever may have been the author of that vidyâ, looked upon it as anything else but a statement of the highest truth accessible to man.

We return to the question as to the true philosophy of the Upanishads, apart from the systems of the commentators.--From what precedes it will appear with sufficient distinctness that, if we understand by philosophy a philosophical system coherent in all its parts, free from all contradictions and allowing room for all the different statements made in all the chief Upanishads, a philosophy of the Upanishads cannot even be spoken of. The various lucubrations on Brahman, the world, and the human soul of which the Upanishads consist do not allow themselves to be systematised simply because they were never meant to form a system. /S/â/nd/ilya's views as to the nature of Brahman did not in all details agree with those of Yâj/ñ/avalkya, and Uddâlaka differed from both. In this there is nothing to wonder at, and the burden of proof rests altogether with those who maintain that a large number of detached philosophic and theological dissertations, ascribed to different authors, doubtless belonging to different periods, and not seldom manifestly contradicting each other, admit of being combined into a perfectly consistent whole.

The question, however, assumes a different aspect, if we take the terms 'philosophy' and 'philosophical system,' not in the strict sense in which /S/a@nkara and other commentators are not afraid of taking them, but as implying merely an agreement in certain fundamental features. In this latter sense we may indeed undertake to indicate the outlines of a philosophy of the Upanishads, only keeping in view that precision in details is not to be aimed at. And here we finally see ourselves driven back altogether on the texts themselves, and have to acknowledge that the help we receive from commentators, to whatever school they may belong, is very inconsiderable. Fortunately it cannot be asserted that the texts on the whole oppose very serious difficulties to a right understanding, however obscure the details often are. Concerning the latter we occasionally depend entirely on the explanations vouchsafed by the scholiasts, but as far as the general drift and spirit of the texts are concerned, we are quite able to judge by ourselves, and are even specially qualified to do so by having no particular system to advocate.

The point we will first touch upon is the same from which we started when examining the doctrine of the Sûtras, viz. the question whether the Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in /S/a@nkara's sense, i.e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently opposed to avîdyâ, by which latter term we have to understand ignorance as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge; and, again, in several places we find the knowledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with its supplementary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mu/nd/aka Up. (I, 4) applies the terms aparâ and parâ vîdyâ. But a formal recognition of the essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed sometimes described as sagu/n/a and sometimes as nirgu/n/a (to use later terms); but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinction of two different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results. The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed; hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same vidyâs it is spoken of as sagu/n/a as well as nirgu/n/a. When the mind of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world; Brahman, then, is called the Self and life of all, the inward ruler, the omniscient Lord, and so on. When, on the other hand, the author follows out the idea that Brahman may be viewed in itself as the mysterious reality of which the whole expanse of the world is only an outward manifestation, then it strikes him that no idea or term derived from sensible experience can rightly be applied to it, that nothing more may be predicated of it but that it is neither this nor that. But these are only two aspects of the cognition of one and the same entity.

Closely connected with the question as to the double nature of the Brahman of the Upanishads is the question as to their teaching Mâyâ.--From Colebrooke downwards the majority of European writers have inclined towards the opinion that the doctrine of Mâyâ, i.e. of the unreal illusory character of the sensible world, does not constitute a feature of the primitive philosophy of the Upanishads, but was introduced into the system at some later period, whether by Bâdarâya/n/a or /S/a@nkara or somebody else. The opposite view, viz. that the doctrine of Mâyâ forms an integral element of the teaching of the Upanishads, is implied in them everywhere, and enunciated more or less distinctly in more than one place, has in recent times been advocated with much force by Mr. Gough in the ninth chapter of his Philosophy of the Upanishads.

In his Matériaux, &c. M. Paul Régnaud remarks that 'the doctrine of Mâyâ, although implied in the teaching of the Upanishads, could hardly become clear and explicit before the system had reached a stage of development necessitating a choice between admitting two co-existent eternal principles (which became the basis of the Sâ@nkhya philosophy), and accepting the predominance of the intellectual principle, which in the end necessarily led to the negation of the opposite principle.'--To the two alternatives here referred to as possible we, however, have to add a third one, viz. that form of the Vedânta of which the theory of the Bhâgavatas or Râmânujas is the most eminent type, and according to which Brahman carries within its own nature an element from which the material universe originates; an element which indeed is not an independent entity like the pradhâna of the Sâ@nkhyas, but which at the same time is not an unreal Mâyâ but quite as real as any other part of Brahman's nature. That a doctrine of this character actually developed itself on the basis of the Upanishads, is a circumstance which we clearly must not lose sight of, when attempting to determine what the Upanishads themselves are teaching concerning the character of the world.

In enquiring whether the Upanishads maintain the Mâyâ doctrine or not, we must proceed with the same caution as regards other parts of the system, i.e. we must refrain from using unhesitatingly, and without careful consideration of the merits of each individual case, the teaching--direct or inferred--of any one passage to the end of determining the drift of the teaching of other passages. We may admit that some passages, notably of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka, contain at any rate the germ of the later developed Mâyâ doctrine[25], and thus render it quite intelligible that a system like /S/a@nkara's should evolve itself, among others, out of the Upanishads; but that affords no valid reason for interpreting Mâyâ into other texts which give a very satisfactory sense without that doctrine, or are even clearly repugnant to it. This remark applies in the very first place to all the accounts of the creation of the physical universe. There, if anywhere, the illusional character of the world should have been hinted at, at least, had that theory been held by the authors of those accounts; but not a word to that effect is met with anywhere. The most important of those accounts--the one given in the sixth chapter of the Chândogya Upanishad--forms no exception. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the 'sending forth' of the elements from the primitive Sat, which is there described at length, was by the writer of that passage meant to represent a vivarta rather than a pari/n/âma that the process of the origination of the physical universe has to be conceived as anything else but a real manifestation of real powers hidden in the primeval Self. The introductory words, addressed to /S/vetaketu by Uddâlaka, which are generally appealed to as intimating the unreal character of the evolution about to be described, do not, if viewed impartially, intimate any such thing[26]. For what is capable of being proved, and manifestly meant to be proved, by the illustrative instances of the lump of clay and the nugget of gold, through which there are known all things made of clay and gold? Merely that this whole world has Brahman for its causal substance, just as clay is the causal matter of every earthen pot, and gold of every golden ornament, but not that the process through which any causal substance becomes an effect is an unreal one. We--including Uddâlaka--may surely say that all earthen pots are in reality nothing but earth--the earthen pot being merely a special modification (vikâra) of clay which has a name of its own--without thereby committing ourselves to the doctrine that the change of form, which a lump of clay undergoes when being fashioned into a pot, is not real but a mere baseless illusion.

In the same light we have to view numerous other passages which set forth the successive emanations proceeding from the first principle. When, for instance, we meet in the Ka/th/a Up. I, 3, 10, in the serial enumeration of the forms of existence intervening between the gross material world and the highest Self (the Person), with the 'avyâk/ri/ta,' the Undeveloped, immediately below the purusha; and when again the Mu/nd/aka Up. II, 1, 2, speaks of the 'high Imperishable' higher than which is the heavenly Person; there is no reason whatever to see in that 'Undeveloped' and that 'high Imperishable' anything but that real element in Brahman from which, as in the Râmânuja system, the material universe springs by a process of real development. We must of course render it quite clear to ourselves in what sense the terms 'real' and 'unreal' have to be understood. The Upanishads no doubt teach emphatically that the material world does not owe its existence to any principle independent from the Lord like the pradhâna of the Sâ@nkhyas; the world is nothing but a manifestation of the Lord's wonderful power, and hence is unsubstantial, if we take the term 'substance' in its strict sense. And, again, everything material is immeasurably inferior in nature to the highest spiritual principle from which it has emanated, and which it now hides from the individual soul. But neither unsubstantiality nor inferiority of the kind mentioned constitutes unreality in the sense in which the Mâyâ of /S/a@nkara is unreal. According to the latter the whole world is nothing but an erroneous appearance, as unreal as the snake, for which a piece of rope is mistaken by the belated traveller, and disappearing just as the imagined snake does as soon as the light of true knowledge has risen. But this is certainly not the impression left on the mind by a comprehensive review of the Upanishads which dwells on their general scope, and does not confine itself to the undue urging of what may be implied in some detached passages. The Upanishads do not call upon us to look upon the whole world as a baseless illusion to be destroyed by knowledge; the great error which they admonish us to relinquish is rather that things have a separate individual existence, and are not tied together by the bond of being all of them effects of Brahman, or Brahman itself. They do not say that true knowledge sublates this false world, as /S/a@nkara says, but that it enables the sage to extricate himself from the world--the inferior mûrta rûpa of Brahman, to use an expression of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka--and to become one with Brahman in its highest form. 'We are to see everything in Brahman, and Brahman in everything;' the natural meaning of this is, 'we are to look upon this whole world as a true manifestation of Brahman, as sprung from it and animated by it.' The mâyâvâdin has indeed appropriated the above saying also, and interpreted it so as to fall in with his theory; but he is able to do so only by perverting its manifest sense. For him it would be appropriate to say, not that everything we see is in Brahman, but rather that everything we see is out of Brahman, viz. as a false appearance spread over it and hiding it from us.

Stress has been laid[27] upon certain passages of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka which seem to hint at the unreality of this world by qualifying terms, indicative of duality or plurality of existence, by means of an added 'iva,' i.e. 'as it were' (yatrânyad iva syât; yatra dvaitam iva bhavati; âtmâ dhyâyatîva lelâyatîva). Those passages no doubt readily lend themselves to Mâyâ interpretations, and it is by no means impossible that in their author's mind there was something like an undeveloped Mâyâ doctrine. I must, however, remark that they, on the other hand, also admit of easy interpretations not in any way presupposing the theory of the unreality of the world. If Yâj/ñ/avalkya refers to the latter as that 'where there is something else as it were, where there is duality as it were,' he may simply mean to indicate that the ordinary opinion, according to which the individual forms of existence of the world are opposed to each other as altogether separate, is a mistaken one, all things being one in so far as they spring from--and are parts of--Brahman. This would in no way involve duality or plurality being unreal in /S/a@nkara's sense, not any more than, for instance, the modes of Spinoza are unreal because, according to that philosopher, there is only one universal substance. And with regard to the clause 'the Self thinks as it were' it has to be noted that according to the commentators the 'as it were' is meant to indicate that truly not the Self is thinking, but the upadhis, i.e. especially the manas with which the Self is connected. But whether these upadhis are the mere offspring of Mâyâ, as /S/a@nkara thinks, or real forms of existence, as Râmânuja teaches, is an altogether different question.

I do not wish, however, to urge these last observations, and am ready to admit that not impossibly those iva's indicate that the thought of the writer who employed them was darkly labouring with a conception akin to--although much less explicit than--the Mâyâ of /S/a@nkara. But what I object to is, that conclusions drawn from a few passages of, after all, doubtful import should be employed for introducing the Mâyâ doctrine into other passages which do not even hint at it, and are fully intelligible without it.[28]

The last important point in the teaching of the Upanishads we have to touch upon is the relation of the jîvas, the individual souls to the highest Self. The special views regarding that point held by /S/a@nkara and Râmânuja, as have been stated before. Confronting their theories with the texts of the Upanishads we must, I think, admit without hesitation, that /S/a@nkara's doctrine faithfully represents the prevailing teaching of the Upanishads in one important point at least, viz. therein that the soul or Self of the sage--whatever its original relation to Brahman may be--is in the end completely merged and indistinguishably lost in the universal Self. A distinction, repeatedly alluded to before, has indeed to be kept in view here also. Certain texts of the Upanishads describe the soul's going upwards, on the path of the gods, to the world of Brahman, where it dwells for unnumbered years, i.e. for ever. Those texts, as a type of which we may take, the passage Kaushît. Up. I--the fundamental text of the Râmânujas concerning the soul's fate after death--belong to an earlier stage of philosophic development; they manifestly ascribe to the soul a continued individual existence. But mixed with texts of this class there are others in which the final absolute identification of the individual Self with the universal Self is indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness. 'He who knows Brahman and becomes Brahman;' 'he who knows Brahman becomes all this;' 'as the flowing rivers disappear in the sea losing their name and form, thus a wise man goes to the divine person.' And if we look to the whole, to the prevailing spirit of the Upanishads, we may call the doctrine embodied in passages of the latter nature the doctrine of the Upanishads. It is, moreover, supported by the frequently and clearly stated theory of the individual souls being merged in Brahman in the state of deep dreamless sleep.

It is much more difficult to indicate the precise teaching of the Upanishads concerning the original relation of the individual soul to the highest Self, although there can be no doubt that it has to be viewed as proceeding from the latter, and somehow forming a part of it. Negatively we are entitled to say that the doctrine, according to which the soul is merely brahma bhrântam or brahma mayopadhikam, is in no way countenanced by the majority of the passages bearing on the question. If the emission of the elements, described in the Chândogya and referred to above, is a real process--of which we saw no reason to doubt--the jîva âtman with which the highest Self enters into the emitted elements is equally real, a true part or emanation of Brahman itself.

After having in this way shortly reviewed the chief elements of Vedântic doctrine according to the Upanishads, we may briefly consider /S/a@nkara's system and mode of interpretation--with whose details we had frequent opportunities of finding fault--as a whole. It has been said before that the task of reducing the teaching of the whole of the Upanishads to a system consistent and free from contradictions is an intrinsically impossible one. But the task once being given, we are quite ready to admit that /S/a@nkara's system is most probably the best which can be devised. While unable to allow that the Upanishads recognise a lower and higher knowledge of Brahman, in fact the distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This becomes very manifest as soon as we compare /S/a@nkara's system with that of Râmânuja. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we should say, a personal God, and he therefore lays stress on all those passages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a personal God, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those passages, on the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal intelligence, Râmânuja is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system. The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman; Râmânuja cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation carried as far as possible. /S/a@nkara, on the other hand, by skilfully ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world become somewhat crude and gross, Hira/n/yagarbha and Virâj are summoned forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Virâj Mr. Gough remarks (p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads for the purusha of the ancient /ri/shis, the divine being out of whom the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we substitute for the 'poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox Vedânta system--for the Upanishads give no indication whatever that by their purusha they understand not the simple old purusha but the Virâj occupying a definite position in a highly elaborate system;--but the mere phrase, 'providing a place' intimates with sufficient clearness the nature of the work in which systematisers of the Vedântic doctrine are engaged.