An admirable statement of the aims of the Library of Philosophy was provided by the first editor, the late Professor J. H. Muirhead, in his description of the original programme printed m Erdmann's History of Philosophy under the date 1890. This was slightly modified m subsequent volumes to take the form of the following statement 'The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was designed as a contribution to the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads- first of Different Schools of Thought — Sensationalist, Realist, Idealist, Intuitivist; secondly of different Subjects — Psychology, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Theology While much had been done m England in tracing the course of evolu- tion m nature, history, economics, morals and religion, little had been done in tracing the development of thought on these subjects. Yet "the evolution of opinion is part of the whole evolution". 'By the co-operation of different writers m carrying out this plan it was hoped that a thoroughness and completeness of treatment, otherwise unattainable, might be secured. It was believed also that from writers mainly British and American fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it had hitherto received might be looked for. In the earlier series of books containing, among others, Bosanquet's History of Aesthetic Pfleiderer's Rational Theology since Kant, Albee's History of English Utilitarianism, Bonar's Philosophy and Political Economy Brett's History of Psychology, Ritchie's Natural Kights, these objects were to a large extent effected. Tn the meantime original work of a high order was beine produced both in England and America by such writers as Bradley, Stout Bertrand Russell, Baldwin, Urban, Montague, and others, and a new interest m foreign works German ^ 'S^ WlU ? h had eithCT beco ™ classTcd or™ ?e T i£ l pub u° attentlon . ha d developed. The scope of the na?S 2!? ♦ T eXtend t d mto sometlun g more inter- the hoS * w * entermg the fifth decade of to ^tence » Sto2n £ ♦ niay contnbute to that mutual understanding between countries which ,s so pressing a need of the present prSm^todav *S £ r ° feS n Mmthead StreSSed 18 ™ less a! g A l y i , nd few wU den y that philosophy has much to do with enabling us to meet it, although no onef £ of^t Muirhead himself, would regard that as the sole, or even the main, object of philosophy As Professor Muirhead continues to lend the distinction of his name to the Library of Philosophy it seemed not inappropriate to allow him to recall us to these aims m his own words The emphasis on the history of thought also seemed to me very timely, and the number of important works promised for the Library in the very near future augur well for the continued fulfilment, in this and other ways, of the expectations of the original editor H D LEWIS KHEAD LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY General Editor" H. D. Lewis fjfessor of History and Philosophy of Religion ttt the University >' of London Action by sir malcolm knox The Analysts of Mmd bertrand russeu. Clarity ts Not Enough by h. d lewis Coleridge as Philosopher by J. H. muirhead The Commonplace Book of G. E. Moore edited by c lewy Contemporary American Philosophy edited by G. v adams and \V P. MONTAGUE Contemporary British Philosophy First and second series edited by j. h muirhead Contemporary British Philosophy Third series edited by h. r>, LEWIS Contemporary Indian Philosophy edited by radhakrishnan and j. h. muirhead 2nd edition The Discipline of the Cave by j s. tindlay Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy by kikiak SMART Essays m Analysis by alice Ambrose Ethics by kicolai hartmann translated by stanto.v coit 3 vols The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science by errol e, Harris Freedom and History by H d. lewis The Good Will A Study in the Coherence Theory of Goodness bv H j paton J Hegel A Re-Examinatton by j n. findlay Hegel's Science of Logic translated by w. h. iohkston and l G STRUTHERS 2 Vols History of Aesthetic by b. bosanquet 2nd edition History of English Utilitarianism by z. albee History of Psychology by g. s. brett edited by r. s. peters abridged one-volume edition 2nd edition Human Knowledge by bertrand russell A Hundred Years of British Philosophy by rudolf metz «JL ^ Inirodwlion ^ Pure Phenomenology by edmund husserl translated by w. r. boyce gibson Imagination by e j. furlong ^ediS^ 3 ' ty RADHAKRI ™ * vols revised 2nd Introdua^toMathenuaical Philosophy by bertrand russell Kant's First Critique by h w. cassirer Kant's Metaphysic of Experience by h j paton Know Thyself by bernadino varisco translated by guglielm o SALVADORI Language and Reality by wilbur Marshall urban Lectures on Philosophy by g e. moore Matter and Memory by henri bergson translated by n m paul and w s palmer Memory by brian smith The Modern Predicament by h j paton Natural Rights by d g ritchie 3rd edition Nature, Mtnd and Modern Science by e Harris The Nature of Thought by brand blanshard On Selfhood and Godhood by c a Campbell Our Experience of God by H D lewis Perception and our Knowledge of the External World by DON LOCKE The Phenomenology of Mind by g w f hegel translated by sir James baillie revised 2nd edition Philosophical Papers by G E moore Philosophy and Illusion by morris lazerowitz Philosophy m America by max black Philosophy and Political Economy by james bonar Philosophy and Religion by axel hagerstrom Philosophy of Space and Time by michael whiteman Philosophy of Whitehead by w. mays The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy by john h muirhead The Principal UpanisJiads by radahkrishnan The Problems of Perception by R j hirst Reason and Goodness by brand blanshard The Relevance of Whiteliead by ivor leclerc Some Mam Problems of Philosophy by g e moore Studies in the Metaphysics of Bradley by sushil kumar sakena The Theological Frontier of Ethics by w g maclagan Time and Free Will by henri bergson translated by f g pogson The Transcendence of the Cave by j n findlay Values and Intentions by j n. findlay The Ways of Knowing or The Methods of Philosophy by w p MONTAGUE TEbe flButtbeao Xibrars of pbtlosopbB EDITED BY H. D. LEWIS THE PRINCIPAL UPANISADS By RADHAKRISHNAN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY THE HINDU VIEW OF LI*E AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE EAST AND WEST IN RELIGION RELIGION AND SOCIETY THE BRAHMA SUTRA RECOVERY OF FAITH RELIGION IN A CHANGING WORLD THE BHAGAVADGlTA By A N MARLOW RADHAKRISHNAN AN ANTHOLOGY (Allen & Unwin) EASTERN RELIGIONS AND WESTERN THOUGHT (Clarendon Press, Oxford) THE DHAMMAPADA (Oxford University Press) INDIA AND CHINA IS THIS PEACE' GREAT INDIANS (Hind Kitabs, Bombay) Edited by radhakrishnan MAHATMA GANDHI (Allen & Unwin) Edited by radhakrishnan and J h muirhead CONTEMPORARY INDIAN PHILOSOPHY (Allen & Unwin) Edited by radhakrishnan and p T raju THE CONCEPT OF MAN (Allen & Unwin) Edited by radhakrishnan, a wadia, d m datta and h kabir HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY EASTERN AND WESTERN S VOLS (Allen & Unwin) THE PRINCIPAL UPANISADS EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, TEXT, TRANSLATION AND NOTES BY S. RADHAKRISHNAN LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE < MUSEUM STREET FIRST PUBLISHED IN I953 SECOND IMPRESSION I968 7 his book is copyright under the Berne Convention 4parl from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, atticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher Cloth bd edition sbn 04 294046 X Paper bd edition sbn 04 294047 8 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN by Photolithography UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED WOKTNG AND LONDON PREFACE Human nature is not altogether unchanging but it does remain sufficiently constant to justify the study of ancient classics The problems of human life and destiny have not been superseded by the striking achievements of science and technology. The solutions offered, though conditioned in their modes of expression by their time and environment, have not been seriously affected by the march of scientific knowledge and criticism The responsibility laid on man as a rational being, to integrate himself, to relate the present to the past and the future, to live in time as well as in eternity, has become acute and urgent. The Upanisads, though remote m time from us, are not remote in thought. They disclose the working of the primal impulses of the human soul which rise above the differ- ences of race and of geographical position. At the core of all historical religions there are fundamental types of spiritual experience though they are expressed with different degrees of clarity. The Upanisads illustrate and illuminate these primary experiences. 'These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me. If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing or next to nothing,' said Walt Whitman The Upanisads deal with questions which arise when men begin to reflect seriously and attempt answers to them which are not very different, except m their approach and emphasis from what we are now inclined to accept This does not mean that the message of the Upanisads, which is as true today as ever, commits us to the different hypotheses about the structure of the world and the physiology of man We must make a distinction between the message of the Upanisads and their mythology The latter is liable to correction by advances in science Even this mythology becomes intelligible if we place ourselves as far as possible at the viewpoint of those who con- ceived it Those parts of the Upanisads which seem to us today Zt» InH 1 ^' « 10US ai i d ? lmost UIlme ai™g, should have had value and significance at the time they were composed Anyone who reads the Upanisads m the original Sanskrit will be caught up and earned away by the elevS^n, Se poet™ the compelling fascination of the many utterances thrS which they lay bare the secret and saLd l3SL of the 6 The Principal Upamsads human soul and the Ultimate Reality When we read them, we cannot help being impressed by the exceptional ability, earnest- ness and ripeness of mmd of those who wrestled with these ultimate questions These souls who tackled these problems remain still and will remain for all time in essential harmony with the highest ideals of civilisation. The Upamsads are the foundations on which the beliefs of millions of human beings, who were not much inferior to our- selves, are based Nothing is more sacred to man than his own history. At least as memorials of the past, the Upamsads are worth our attention A proper knowledge of the texts is an indispensable aid to the understanding of the Upamsads There are parts of the Upamsads which repel us by their repetitiveness and irrelevance to our needs, philosophical and religious But if we are to under- stand their ideas, we must know the atmosphere in which they worked We must not judge ancient writings from our standards We need not condemn our fathers for having been what they were or ourselves for being somewhat different from them It is our task to relate them to their environment, to bridge distances of time and space and separate the transitory from the permanent There is a danger in giving only carefully chosen extracts We are likely to give what is easy to read and omit what is difficult, or give what is agreeable to our views and omit what is disagreeable It is wise to study the Upamsads as a whole, their striking insights as well as their commonplace assumptions Only such a study will be historically valuable I have therefore given m full the classical Upamsads, those commented on or mentioned by Samkara The other Upamsads are of a later date and are sectarian in character. They represent the popular gods, Siva, Visnu, Sakti, as manifestations of the Supreme Reality. They are not parts of the original Veda, are of much later origin and are not therefore as authoritative as the classical Upamsads If they are all to be included, it would be difficult to find a Publisher for so immense a work I have therefore selected a few other Upamsads, some of those to which references are made by the great teachers, Samkara and Ram ami] a In the matter of translation and interpretation, I owe a heavy debt, directly and indirectly, not only to the classical commentators but also to the modern writers who have worked Preface 7 on the subject. I have profited by their tireless labours The careful reader will find, I hope, that a small advance in a few places at least has been made m this translation towards a better understanding of the texts. Passages in verse are not translated into rhyme as the padding and inversion necessary for observing a metrical pattern take away a great deal from the dignity and concise- ness of the original. It is not easy to render Sanskrit religious and philosophical classics into English for each language has its own charac- teristic genius. Language conveys thought as well as feeling. It falls short of its full power and purpose, if it fails to com- municate the emotion as fully as it conveys the idea. Words convey ideas but they do not always express moods In the Upanisads we find harmonies of speech which excite the emotions and stir the soul I am afraid that it has not been possible for me to produce m the English translation the richness of melody, the warmth of spirit, the power of enchant- ment that appeals to the ear, heart and mind I have tried to be faithful to the originals, sometimes even at the cost of elegance. I have given the texts with all their nobility of sound and the feeling of the numinous For the classical Upanisads the text followed is that com- mented on by Sarakara A multitude of variant readings of the texts exist, some of them to be found in the famous commen- taries, others in more out of the way versions. The chief variant readings are mentioned in the notes As my interest is philo- sophical rather than linguistic, I have not discussed them In the translation, words which are omitted or understood in Sanskrit or are essential to complete the grammatical structure are inserted in brackets We cannot bring to the study of the Upanisads virgin minds which are untouched by the views of the many generations of scholars who have gone before us. Their influence may work either directly or indirectly. To be aware of this limitation to S^. 00 ^^ . of g«*t importance in the study of ancient .texts. The classical commentators represent in their works the great oral traditions of interpretation which W been cumnt in their time. Centuries of careful Shflie behind the exegetical traditions as they finally took shKe It would be futile to neglect the work of th TcWnStoS as there are words and passages in the UpamsSHf w3c? Z 8 The Principal Upamsads could make little sense without the help of the commen- tators We do not have in the Upamsads a single well-articulated system of thought We find m them a number of different strands which could be woven together m a single whole by sympathetic interpretation Such an account involves the ex- pression of opinions which can always be questioned Impar- tiality does not consist m a refusal to form opinions or in a futile attempt to conceal them It consists in rethinking the thoughts of the past, m understanding their environment, and m relating them to the intellectual and spiritual needs of our own time While we should avoid the attempt to read into the terms of the past the meanings of the present, we cannot overlook the fact that certain problems are the same in all ages We must keep in mind the Buddhist saying 'Whatever is not adapted to such and such persons as are to be taught cannot be called a teaching ' We must remain sensitive to the prevailing currents of thought and be prepared, as far as we are able, to translate the universal truth into terms intelligible to our audience, without distorting their meaning It would scarcely be possible to exaggerate the difficulty of such a task, but it has to be undertaken If we are able to make the seeming abstractions of the Upamsads flame anew with their ancient colour and depth, if we can make them pulsate with their old meaning, they will not appear to be altogether irrelevant to our needs, intellectual and spiritual The notes are framed m this spirit The Upamsads which base their affirmations on spiritual experience are invaluable for us, as the traditional props of faith, the infallible scripture, miracle and prophecy are no longer avadable The irreligion of our times is largely the product of the supremacy of religious technique over spmtual life The study of the Upamsads may help to restore to funda- mental things of religion that reality without which they seem to be meaningless Besides, at a time when moral aggression is compelling people to capitulate to queer ways of life, when vast experi- ments in social structure and political organisation are being made at enormous cost of life and suffering, when we stand perplexed and confused before the future with no clear light to guide our way, the power of the human soul is the only refuge If we resolve to be governed by it, our civilisation may Preface 9 enter upon its most glorious epoch. There arc many 'dis- satisfied children of the spirit of the west,' to use Romam Rolland's phrase, who are oppressed that the universality of her great thoughts has been defamed for ends of violent action, that they are trapped in a blind alley and arc savagely crushing each other out of existence When an old binding culture is being broken, when ethical standards are dissolving, when we are being aroused out of apathy or awakened out of uncon- sciousness, when there is in the air general ferment, inward stirring, cultural crisis, then a high tide of spiritual agitation sweeps over peoples and we sense in the horizon something novel, something unprecedented, the beginnings of a spiritual renaissance We are living in a world of freer cultural inter- course and wider world sympathies. No one can ignore his neighbour who is also groping in this world of sense for the world unseen. The task set to our generation is to reconcile the varying ideals of the converging cultural patterns and help them to sustain and support rather than combat and destroy one another. By this process they are transformed from within and the forms that separate them will lose their exclusivist meaning and signify only that unity with their own origins and inspirations The study of the sacred books of religions other than one's own is essential for speeding up this process. Students of Chris- tian religion and theology, especially those who wish to make Indian Christian thought not merely 'geographically' but 'organically' Indian, should understand their great heritage which is contained m the Upanisads For us Indians, a study of the Upanisads is essential, if we are to preserve our national being and character. To discover the mam lines of our traditional life, we must turn to our classics, the Vedas and the Upanisads, the Bhagavad-gM and me Dhamma-pada They have done more to colour our minds than we generally acknowledge They not only thought many of our thoughts but coined hundreds of the words thlt we use fj ! y * u fe ; l here ls , much m our that « degrading and hS? , U - ? 6re 15 alS ° mU ? h that 15 hfe -g ivin S and di5 tmg If the past is to serve as an inspnation for the future we have to study it with discrimination and sympathy. Again the highest achievements of the human mind and spint are not Wh J*/* gates of the futur « are wide open While the fundamental motives, the governing id?a S Xch 10 The Principal Upamsads constitute the essential spirit of our culture are a part of our very being, they should receive changing expression according to the needs and conditions of our time There is no more inspiring task for the student of Indian thought than to set forth some phases of its spintual wisdom and bring them to bear on our own life Let us, in the words of Socrates, 'turn over together the treasures that wise men have left us, glad if in so doing we make fnends with one another ' The two essays written for the Philosophy of the Upamsads (1924), which is a reprint of chapter IV from my Indian Philo- sophy, Volume I, by Rabindranath Tagore and Edmond Holmes, are to be found m the Appendices A and B respectively I am greatly indebted to my distinguished and generous friends Professors Sumti Kumar Chatterji, and Siddhesvar Bhattacharya for their great kindness in reading the proofs and making many valuable suggestions Moscow, October, 1951 S R. CONTENTS PACB Preface 5 Scheme of Transliteration 13 List of Abbreviations X4 Introduction 15 I. General Influence 17 II. The Term 'Upanisad' 19 III. Number, Date and Authorship 20 IV. The Upanisads as the Vedanta 24 V. Relation to the Vedas: The Rg Veda 27 VI. The Yajur, the Sama and the Aiharva 44 Vedas VII. The Brahmanas 46 VIII. The Aranyakas 47 IX. The Upanisads 48 X, Ultimate Reality: Brahman 52 XI. Ultimate Reality. Atman 73 XII. Brahman as Atman 77 XIII, The Status of the World and the Doc- trine of Maya and Aviiya 78 XIV. The Individual Self go XV. Knowledge and Ignorance 95 XVI. Ethics 104 XVII Karma and Rebirth tt* 12 The "Principal Upanisads PAGE XVIII. Life Eternal 117 XIX. Religion 131 TEXT, TRANSLATION AND NOTES I . Brhad-aranyaka Upantsad 147 II ' Chdndogya Upamsad 335 III , Attareya Upamsad 513 IV 'TattUrtya Upantsad 525 V *> ha Upamsad 565 VI > Kena Ufantsad 579 VII. (Katha Upantsad 593 VIII. .Prasna Upamsad 649 IX iMundaka Upamsad 669 X 'Mandukya Upamsad 693 XI * Svetaivatara Upamsad 707 XII Kausitakl Brahmana Upamsad 751 XIII Matin Upantsad 793 XIV. iSubala Upantsad 861 XV. Jabala Upamsad 893 XVI Pamgala Upamsad 901 XVII Katvalya Upamsad 925 XVIII . Vajrasiicika. Upamsad 933 Appendices (a) Rabmdranath Tagore on The Upani- sads 937 (6) Edmond Holmes on The Upanisads 943 Selected Bibliography 949 General Index 951 SCHEME OF TRANSLITERATION Vowels aaiiuurfleaioau 111 h Consonants gutturals k kh g gh n palatals c ch j jh n cerebrals t th 4 4h n dentals t th d dh n labials P ph b bh m semx-vowch y r 1 v sibilants s as in sun s palatal sibilant pronounced like the soft s of Russian s cerebral sibilant as in shun aspirate h LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Attareya Upamsad . . . A U Anandagiri A Bhagavad-gUa B.G, Brhad-aranyaka Upamsad . . . B U. Brahma Sutra . . B S Chdndogya Upamsad . . C U. Indian Philosophy by Radhaknshnan I P. Isa Upamsad Isa Jabdla Upamsad .... Jabala Kena Upamsad . . . Kena Katha Upamsad .... Katha Kausitakl Upamsad . . K U Mahabharata .... MB Maitri Upamsad .... Maitri Mandukya Upamsad . . . Ma U. Mundaka Upamsad ... M U Paingala Upamsad . . . Pamgala Prasna Upamsad .... Prasna Rangaramanuja R. Ramamrja's Commentary on the Brahma Sutra R B. Ramanuja's Commentary on the Bhagavad-gitd . . . R B G. RgVeda . . . . . RV Samkara 5 Samkara's Commentary on the Brahma Sutra ... SB Samkara's Commentary on the Bhagavad-gttd . . . . S B G Subala Upamsad . . . . Subala Svetdivatara Upamsad . . S U. Tattttrtya Upamsad TU. Upam§ad U Variant V INTRODUCTION I GENERAL INFLUENCE The Upamsads represent a great chapter in the history of the human spirit and have dominated Indian philosophy, religion and life for three thousand years. Every subsequent religious movement has had to show itself to be in accord with their philosophical statements Even doubting and denying spirits found m them anticipations of their hesitancies, misgivings and negations. They have survived many changes, religious and secular, and helped many generations of men to formulate their views on the chief problems of life and existence. Their thought by itself and through Buddhism influenced even m ancient times the cultural life of other nations far beyond the boundaries of India, Greater India, Tibet, China, Japan and Korea and in the South, in Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and far away m the islands of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans In the West, the tracks of Indian thought may be traced far into Central Asia, where, buried in the sands of the desert, were found Indian texts * The Upanisads have shown an unparalleled variety of appeal during these long centuries and have been admired by different people, for different reasons, at different periods They are said " 'For the historian, who pursues the history of human thought, the Upanisads have a yet far greater significance From the mystical doctrines of the Upanisads, one current of thought may be traced to the mysticism of the Persian Sufism, to the mystic, theosophical logos doctrine of the Neo-Platomcs and the Alexandrian Christian mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, and finally to the philosophy of the great German mystic of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer ' Wmtcmitz: A History of Indian Literature E T Vol I (1927), p 266 See Eastern Religions and Western Thought Second Edition (1940), Chapters IV, V, VI, VII It is said that Schopenhauer had the Latin text of the Upanisads on his table and 'was m the habit, before going to bed, of performing his devotions from its pages ' Bloomfield Religion of the Veda (1908) p s>im th> id< ,d of a pnmcv.il hi iiii{ f\istirij: In fore inv d< t< rmm.'tt i Mst« nci* ;mrl evolving hnnv If m the « nipmcd rmiv , Thr vi\r, tliwdi (1 inln two InKr lb urn. nut t i'th sln< v'!_, tlr-ur'i ml 1'artli .in thr- l'Mlcr iwl \lnlh< r n( all lif' ttt p! ^ t> s! tr'in- tic tijij"-" Inlfoftht ' f*r» form* llii doiicnf tlcf t rip !■> • » r ronton t m'>' turr- or slum from wliuh tie ttrv I mil (I itthj ani <• V 'vcm ruth ni'd lienii ii npinirr ft n unii;rst puit »ml h'> !• > i> rti inv u ii.i- ns Phnnt , ) % ro , ^tt-ti J ri< ij> \> n . r'i I tc Inn' <>t tl i -pot. jrt which sc t wis as \cl untlifli n nti iW, v i t'i |vnT.it«* lie ntlW bv tic immtiltntr piojiUion «>f •>..[ f«>nj it Mi nt In uniting tie- mirfcrrtl parents, Htist'ii mil 1" irih in m irri if IU> ui: prw/ r tr Mir. r -nr pursnf suproim f;i>ds On'mu-i.ui'l Ii tli\ ( iirriti"i»t*t i /n" fat\ Jltrji ' Can.bndfe tvtirnt tts'ten. IV (|<»2M. p st'> Ati.iMinatidcr tlt-idnp. .1 ahrmr MtmUr to tic Hrpliii. cniino'np} (i) I here is ,-i priin.il iindiiiirtnti.-ttttl timu, (-•) \ "-pir.iii"-! «f opjw,.tr'. in pairs to form the v.nrUUirtl«r (\) \ n union of tip * m up into the liRhl ' ' It is quite possibk that the S"nukh\a ^\ Um n oVvelnprtunt from the ideis stiKK^Ud in this !i\ inn Prmutui in tltt r (u.ntt rs) is sud to be tsistent indipendentK and frutu^t fir->i conn . into dr-tennm-ite conscioiisiiess in jntellijjince [tntl.at or fmlilli), which is .1 pnyluct of matter (aiyaftla) 5 ho dadar I 164 4 » x. 16. 4. 3 1 X13 161 1 164. 30. < SeeM.U III 1 i.SU. IV 6. 5 I 164 17 atra laukika-pahsa-dvaya-drsfantena liva-paramalmanau stuyele Sayana 42 The Principal Upam§ads do not know their own origin, pitaram na veda 1 The individual souls belong to the world of Hiranya-garbha 'Let this mortal clay (self) be the immortal god '- 'Vouchsafe, 0 Indra, that we may be you '3 One can become a devata, a deity, by one's own deeds 4 The arm of the Rg Veda is to become like gods The individual soul can become the Universal Spirit The way to spiritual attainment is through worships and moral life Vestiges of Yoga discipline are found in a late passage 5 which describes the kesins or the long-haired ascetics with their yogic powers that enabled them to move at will in space Of a mum, it is said that his mortal body men see but he himself fares on the path of the faery spirits His hair is long and his soiled garments are of yellow hue Vamadeva when he felt the unity of all created things with his own self exclaimed 'I am Manu, I am Swya '7 So also King Trasadasyu said that he was Indra and the great Varuna 8 The cardinal virtues are emphasised 'O Mitra and Varuna, by your pathway of truth may we cross '9 Mere memorising of the hymns is of no avail if we do not know the Supreme which sustains all 10 Primitive societies are highly complicated structures, 1 yasmm vrkse madhvadah suparna tiwihanie suvate cadhi viive tasyed iihuh pippalam khadv agre tan nonnaiad yah pitaram na veda RV I 164 az * RV VIII 19 25 3 tvc mdtapy abhuma vipia dlnyam vawina rtaya sapamtah. RV II n 12 ^ BU IV 3 32, see also IV 1 2 devo bhiiwa devan apyett, see also TU II 8 5 The solitary reference to a temple ismKV X 107 10 where the \sord dcva-mana, building of a god, occurs 6 RV X 136 See also Altai eya Brahmana VII 13 7 aham manur abhavam sfttyai caham R V IV 26 1 8 aham lajd varuno RV IV 42 2 9 xtasya pathii vam tatcma VII 65 3 "> tco ahsarc parame vyoman yasmm devil adhi uisuc mscduh yas tarn na veda kirn kamyati ya it tad vidus ta wie samiisatc RV X 164 39 SceSU IV 8 Inlroduclioii 43 balanced social organisations w ith their systems of belief and codes of behaviour. The fundamental needs of society are the moral and the spiritual, the military and the economic. In Indo-European society these three functions are assigned to three different groups, the men of learning and virtue, the men of courage and fight, and the men who provide the economic needs, 1 the Brahmana, the Ksitnya and the Vai£ya. Below them were the Sudras de\ oted to sen ice. These distinctions are found in the Rg Veda, though they are not crystallised into castes. Ancient Iranian society was constituted on a similar pattern Even the gods were classified into the Brahmana, the IOatnya and the Vaisya according to the benefits which they provide, moral, military or economic Our prayers are for righteousness, victory and abundance Siirya, Savitr are gods who confer spiritual benefits. Indra is a war god and A£vms give us health and food. In Roman mythology Jupiter provides spiritual benefits, Mars is the god of war and Quinnus is the god of plenty. Piiatas or fathers or ancestral spirits receive divine worship. The king of the ancestral spirits who rules m the kingdom of the deceased is Yama, a god who belongs to the Indo-Iraman period He is identical with Yima of the Avcsta, who is the first human being, the primeval ancestor of the human race As the first one to depart from this world and enter the realm of the dead, he became its king The kingdom of the dead is in heaven, and the dying man is comforted by the belief that after death he will abide with King Yama in the highest heaven The world of heaven is the place of refuge of the departed * In the funeral hymn,3 the departing soul is asked to 'go forth along the ancient pathway by which our ancestors have departed' The Vedic Heaven is desenbed in glowing terms 'where inexhaustible radiance dwells, where dwells the King Vaivasvata '3 There is no reference to rebirth in the Rg Veda, though its elements are found The jpassage of the soul from the body, its dwelling m other forms of existence, its return to human 1 Luther felt that three classes were ordained by God, the teaching ciass the class of defenders and the working class. 3 RV x *4 3 R.V.IX 113 44 The Principal Upamsads form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma are all mentioned Mitra is born again 1 The Dawn (Usas) is bom again and again* 'I seek neither release nor return 's 'The immortal self will be reborn m a new body due to its meritorious deeds '« Sometimes the departed spirit is asked to go to the plants and 'stay there with bodies '5 There is retribution for good and evil deeds in a life after death Good men go to heaven 6 and others to the world presided over by Yama 7 Their work (dharma) decided their future 8 In the Rg Veda we find the first adventures of the human mind made by those who sought to discover the meaning of existence and man's place in life, 'the first word spoken by the Aryan man '9 VI THE YAJUR, THE SAJIA AND THE ATHARVA VEDAS Sacred knowledge is irayl vidyd It is three-fold, being the knowledge of the Rg, the Yajur and the Soma Vedas The two latter use the hymns of the Rg and the Athana Vcdas and arrange them for purposes of ntual The aim of the Yajur Veda is the correct performance of the sacrifice to which is attributed the "whole control of the universe Deities are of less importance than the mechanism of the sacrifice In the Aiharca Veda the position of the deities is still less important A certain aversion to the recognition of the Atharva Veda as a part of the sacred canon is to be noticed Even the old Buddhist texts speak of learned Brahrnanas versed in the three Vedas 10 1 mitro jayate punah X 85 19 - punah ptmar jayamana I 92 10 3 na asyah lasmi vimucam na avriam punah V 46 1 * jivo mrtasya caratt svadhabhir amartyo marlyena sa yomh I 164 30, see also I 164 38 sKV X 16 3 * I 154 5 1 X 14 2 8 X 16 3 5 Max Muller For further information on the R V. see I P Vol I, Ch n 10 Sulta Ktpata 1019 Introduction 45 Though we meet in the Atharva Veda many of the gods of the Rg Veda, their characters are not so distinct. The sun becomes rohita, the ruddy one. A few gods arc exalted to the position of Prajl-pati, Dhatr (Established, Vidhultr (arranger). Paramesthin (he that is in the highest). In a notable passage the Supreme in the form of Varuna is described as the universal, omnipresent witness. 1 There are references to kala or time as the first cause of all existence, kama or desire as the force behind the evolution of the universe, skambha or support who is conceived as the principle on which everything rests. Theories tracing the world to water or to air as the most subtle of the physical elements are to be met with. The religion of the Atharva Veda reflects the popular belief m numberless spirits and ghosts credited with functions con- nected in various ways with the processes of nature and the life of man.* We see in it strong evidence of the vitality of the pre-Vedic animist religion and its fusion with Vedic beliefs. All objects and creatures are either spirits or are animated by spirits While the gods of the Rg Veda are mostly friendly ones we find in the Atharva Veda dark and demoniacal powers which bring disease and misfortune on mankind We have to win them by flattering petitions and magical rites We come across spells and incantations for gaining worldly ends. The Vedic seer was loth to let the oldest elements disappear without trace. Traces of the influence of the Atharva Veda are to be found in the Upanisads There are spells for the healing of diseases, bhai$ajyani, for life and healing ayusyani suktani. These were the beginnings of the medical science 3 The liberated soul is described as 'free from desire, wise, immortal, self-born . . . not deficient in any respect . . . wise, unageing, young M \ f"?^ samnistdhya yau mantmyete raja tad veda varunah trtlyalj. 3 U. VI 4 we read of devices for securing the love of iestructaon of the lover of a wife See also K U. • X. 8 44, a woman or 46 The Pnnctpal Upamwds VII . THE BRAHMANAS The elements of the ritualistic cult found m the Vedas are developed in the Brahmanas into an elaborate system of ceremonies While in the Hg Veda the sacrifices are a means for the propitiation of the gods, in the Brahmanas they become ends in themselves Even the gods are said to owe their position to sacrifices There are many stones of the conflict between devas and asuras for world power [and of the way m which gods won through the power of the sacrifice 1 It is not the mechanical performance of a sacrificial rite that brings about the desired result, but the knowledge of its real meaning Many of the Brahmana texts are devoted to the exposition of the mystic significance of the various elements of the ntual By means of the sacrifices we 'set m motion' the cosmic forces dealt with and get from them the de- sired results The pnests who knew the details of the aim, meaning and performance of the sacrifice came into great prominence Gods became negligible intermediaries If we perform a rite with knowledge, the expected benefit will result Soon the actual performance of the rite becomes unnecessary Ritualistic religion becomes subordinate to knowledge 2 The Brahmanas are convinced that life on earth is, on the whole, a good thing The ideal for man is to live the full term of his life on earth As he must die, the sacrifice helps him to get to the world of heaven While the Vedic poets hoped for a life m heaven after death, there was uneasmess about the interference of death in a future life The fear of re-dea.tti,punar-mriyu becomes prominent in the Brahmanas Along with the fear of re-death arose the belief of the imperishability of the self or the atman, the « Hatha Samhita XXII. 9, Tailhrlya Samhita V 3 3, Tandya Brahmana XVIII 1 z » See Franklin Edgerton 'The Upanisads What do they seek and Why'' Journal of the American Oriental Society, June, 1929 Inltoduclion 47 essential part of man's being. Death is not the end but only causes new existences which may not be better than the present one Under the influence of popular animism which sees souls similar to the human in all pares of nature, future life was brought down to earth. According to the Satapallta Biahmana, a man has three births, the fir^t whicn he gets from his parents, the second through sacrificial ceremonies and the third which he obtains after death and cremation 1 VIII THE ARAXYAKAS The /hanyakas do not give us rules for the performance of sacrifices and explanations of ceremonies, but provide us with the mystic teaching of the sacrificial religion As a matter of fact, some of the oldest Upam^ds are included in the Aranyaka texts, 5 which arc meant for the study of those who are engaged in the vow of forest life, the Vanaprasthas 3 As those who retire to the forests arc not like the house- holders bound to the ritual, the Aranyakas deal with the meaning and interpretation of the sacrificial cere- monies It is possible that certain sacred rites were per- formed m the seclusion of the forests where teachers and pupils meditated on the significance of these rites The iav V* mi £ lm,,<> ;a>' n 'f. dan nit eta matus ca adhi ptluS ca agre ath I yam W]" ah upanamah sa yad yajalc, (ad dmtlyam jayale; , ' , J. m py' a ^ yatramam agnav abhyadadhati sa yat talas sambhavah, toUrhya m3 ayatc XI 2 i i See IP Vol I, Ch III A,£.. if ! ncluded m the Aitateya Aranyaka which is tacked on to «H? a i"l™ a KU and TU belon S t0 tbe Brahmanas o£ the wCh IF' 3 * B y 1S found at the end of the Satapmha Brahmana C U of Sffm* v% r} sectlon 1S an Aranyaka belongs to a Brahmana of the BrsL jff T -l\ ( Talav «te™ U ) belongs to the Jaimimya Upamsad BfoT v belongs to the Wfate Yajur Veda, Hatha and S U to the Mali* y g ur ?eda, MU and Praim belong to the Aiharva Veda post -Bnffi? attr ? buted to a school of Black Yajur Veda, is perhaps 3 S ]Udged by Its lan g" a S e . style and contents P 4$ The Principal Uj>anisads distinction of Brahmana and Aranyaka is not an absolute one. IX THE UPA2aSADS The Aranyakas 1 shade off impeiceptTbfy into the Upanisads even as the Brahman as shade off into the Aranyakas. While the student tyrahnacariii) reads the hymns, the house- holder (grliasfha) attends to the Brahmanas which speak of the daily duties and sacrificial ceremonies, the hermit, the man of the forest (pdnaprasthd), discusses the Aranyakas, the monk who has renounced worldly attachment (samiyasin), studies the Upanisads, which specialise in philosophical speculations. The great teachers of the past did not claim any credit for themselves, but maintained that they only transmitted the wisdom of the ancients. 2 The philosophical tendencies implicit in the Yedic hymns are developed in the Upanisads. Hymns to gods and goddesses are replaced by a search for the reality underlying the fmx of things. *What is that which, being known, everything else becomes known?'3 Kena Upamsad gives the story of the discomfiture of the gods who found out the truth that it is the power of Brahman which sustains the gods of fire, air, etc 4 YThile the poets of the Veda speak to us of the many into which the radiance of the Supreme has split, the philosophers of the Upanisads speak to us of the One Reality behind and beyond the fiux of the world. The Vedic deities are the messengers of the One Light which has * AiiWjZ Arsr-jS's (III. I. I.} bsgfcis -with the H3e 'The Upanisadof t'rt Samhiis; a'.hSias szri h-iay a up3ri:afs^saisoSair?hy ay ana Aranyaka VTI. 2. 5 Cp. Confcdus: 'I am not bom endorsed -Kith knowledge I am a man ■vrho loves the ancients ssd has made every effort to acqnire their learning.* L r tr. yj, VH. io. i M.tT. I i 3;seeElsoT.U. II. S. * See also 3 U. HI. PnSml 95 M U.I. 2 10. 5o The Principal Upamsads whole universe in place of the horse, and by the renuncia- tion of the world attains spiritual autonomy in place of earthly sovereignty 1 In every Jtoma the expression svaha is used which implies the renunciation of the ego, svaiva- haiiana - There is great stress on the distinction between the ignorant, narrow, selfish way which leads to transitory satisfac- tions and the way which leads to eternal life Yajfia is Karma, work 3 It is work done for the improvement of the soul and the good of the world, atmonmtaye jagaddhttaya Samkhyaycma Brahmana of the Rg Veda says that the self is the sacrifice and the human soul is the sacnficer, purnso vai yajiiah, atma yajamdnah The observance of the Vedic ritual prepares the mind for final release, if it is in the right spirit < Prayer and sacrifice are means to philosophy and spiritual life While true sacrifice is the abandonment of one's ego, prayer is the exploration of reality by entering the beyond that is within, by ascension of consciousness It is not theoretical learnings We must see the eternal, the celestial, the still If it is unknowable and incomprehensible, it is yet realisable by self-disciphne and integral insight We can seize the truth not 1 Devi Bhagavata says that the Supreme took the form of the Buddha in order to put a stop to wrong sacrifices and prevent injury to animals dttsia-yajiia-vtghdtaya pasu-himsa ntvrilaye bauddha-rupam dadhau yo'stm tasmat devaya te namah Animal sacrifices are found in the Vedas (inserted) by the twice-born who are given to pleasures and relishing tastes Non-injury is, venly, the highest truth dvijair bhoga-ratair vede dariitam himsanam paioh jihva-svada-patath kamam ahimsaiva para mala s Yaska explains it thus sit aha lit va, sva vag Slieti va, svam p>aheit va, svahutam havir juholi tti va Ktrukta VIII 21 3 Cp B G III 9, 10 Manu says 'Learning is brahma-yajna, service of elders is pilr-yajna, honouring great and learned people is deva-yajna, performing religious acts and chanty is bhuta-yajiia and entertaining guests is nara-yajiia ' adhyapanam biahma-yajHaJi pilr-yajiias ttt tarpanam homo datvo bahr bhauto nr-yajiio alithi-pRjanam * Laugaksi Bhaskara points out at the end of the Arlha-samgraha, so'yant dkarniah yad uddisya vthilah lad-uddesena knyamanah tad-hetuh, isvararpana-bitddhja knyamanas lit mhsreyasa-heiuh s CU VII 1 2 3 Juiioduclioit 51 by logical thinking, but by the energy of our whole inner being. Prayer stalls with faith, with complete trust in the Being to whom appeal is made, with the feeling of a profound need, and a simple faith that God can giant us benefits and is well disposed towards us When we attain the blinding experience of the spiritual light, we feel compelled to proclaim a new law for the world The Upanisad seers arc not bound by the rules of caste, but extend the law of spiritual univcrsalism to the utmost bounds of human existence The story of Satyakama Jabala, who, though unable to give his father's name, was yet initiated into spiritual life, shows that the Upanfcad wnters appeal from the rigid ordinances of custom to those divine and spiritual laws which are not of today or of yesterday, but live for ever and of their origin knoweth no man The words tat fvam asi are so familiar that they slide off our minds without full compre- hension. The goal is not a heavenly state of bliss or rebirth in a better world, but freedom from the objective, cosmic law of karma and identity with the Supreme Consciousness and Freedom The Vedic paradise, svaiga, becomes a stage in the individual's growth 1 The Upamsads generally mention the Vedas with respect and their study is enjoined as an important duty 1 Certain verses from the Vedas such as the gayabi form the subject of meditations* and sometimes verses from the Vedas are quoted «i support of the teaching of the Upamsads 4 While the Upamsads use the Vedas, their teaching is dependent on the personal experience and testimony of teachers like Yajnavalkya, bandilya The authority of the Vedas is, to no small extent, due to the inclusion of the Upamsads m them It is often stated that Vedic knowledge by itself will not do. In the Chandogya Upamsad.i Svetaketu admits that he has s JcfJ he sv ^ a off ered as a reward for ceremonial conformity is only a B%«rateXI gr< ™ th ° f thC human SOu1, saUva S wt ° da y« bJth r ™?h h ° panuad ** efines " var S a a s sat-samsarga Heaven and Hell are tum tne cosmic process atrmvavamkassvargah Bhagavata III. 30 29 5 vi ^ 4 32 ' 1 9- 3 BU VI. 3 6. 4 BU I 3 10 52 The Principal Upanisads studied all the Vedas but is lacking in the knowledge 'whereby what has not been heard of becomes heard of, what has not been thought of becomes thought of, what has not been under- stood becomes understood ' Narada tells Sanatkumara that he has not the knowledge of the Self though he has covered the entire range of knowledge, from the Vedas to snake-charming 1 X ULTIMATE REALITY- BRAHMAN To the pioneers of the Upanisads, the problem to be solved presented itself in the form, what is the world rooted m ? What is that by reaching which we grasp the many objects perceived in the world around us' They assume, as many philosophers do, that the world of multiplicity is, in fact, reducible to one single, primary reality which reveals itself to our senses m different forms This reality is hidden from senses but is discernible to the reason The Upanisads raise the question, what is that reality which remains identical and persists through change' The word used in the Upanisads to indicate the supreme reality is brahman It is derived from the root brh 'to grow, to burst forth ' The derivation suggests gushing forth, bubbling over, ceaseless growth, brhattvam Samkara derives the word 'brahman' from the root brlialt to exceed, ahiayana and means by it eternity, punty For Madhva, brahman is the person in whom the qualities dwell in fullness, brhanto hy asmtn gunah The real is not a pale abstraction, but is quickemngly alive, of powerful vitality. In the Rg Veda, brahman is used in the sense of 'sacred knowledge or utterance, a hymn or incantation,' the concrete expression of spiritual wisdom Sometimes Vac is personified as the One. 1 Vtsva-karman, the All-Maker is said to be the lord of the holy utterance 3 Brahman is manira or prayer. Gradually it acquired the meaning of power or potency of prayer, It has a mysterious power and contains within itself the essence of the thing denoted Brhaspati, Brahmanas- pati are interpreted as the lord of prayer. ' VII i fi » KV X 125, Aeharva Veda TV 30 3 X. 81. 7, X. 71. Introduction 53 In the Brahmanas, brahman denotes the ritual and so is regarded as omnipotent. He who knows brahman knows and controls the universe. Brahman becomes the primal principle and guiding spirit of the universe 'There is nothing more ancient or brighter than this brahman In later thought, biahman meant wisdom or Veda As divine origin was ascribed to the Veda or brahman, the two words were used with the same meaning. Biahman or sacred know- ledge came to be called the first created thing, brahma pratha- majam and even to be treated as the creative principle, the cause of all existence. The word suggests a fundamental kinship between the aspiring spirit of man and the spirit of the universe which it seeks to attain The wish to know the Real implies that we know it to some extent. If we do not know anything about it, we cannot even say that it is and that we wish to know it If we know the Real, it is because the Real knows itself in us The desire for God, the feeling that we are in a state of exile, implies the reality of God in us All spiritual progress is the growth of half-knowledge into clear illumination. Religious experience is the evidence for the Divine In our inspired moments we have the feeling that there is a greater reality within us, though we cannot tell what it is From the movements that stir in us and the utterances that issue from us, we perceive the power, not ourselves, that moves us Religious experience is by no means subjective God cannot be known or experienced except through his own act If we have a knowledge of Brahman, it is due to the working of Brahman m us a Prayer is the witness to the spirit of the transcendent divine immanent in the spirit of man. The thinkers of the Upanisads based the reality of Brahman on the fact of spiritual experience, ranging from simple prayer to lUummated experience The distinctions which they make in the nature of the Supreme Reality are not merely logical, iney are facts of spiritual experience I ^ ata pathaBrahnanaX 3 5. 11 find T P h» St Anse *?- 'I cannot seek Thee except Thou teach me, nor rXed TV, 6 ** 61 ? Thou reveal Thyself, Rwni 'Was it not I who sum- naml ? ,, Ion & servlce - was lt: not I wh o m ade Thee busy with my name? Thy calling "Allah" was my "Here am I".' y 54 The Principal ZJ-pamsais The thinkers of the Upanisads attempt to establish the reality of God from an analysis of the facts of nature and the facts of inner life 'Who knows and who can declare what pathway leads to the gods' Seen are their lowest dwelling-places only, What pathway leads to the highest, most secret regions'' 1 The Upanisads assume that it is a distorted habit of mind which identifies 'the highest, most secret regions' with the 'lowest dwelling-places ' The Real is not the actual The Upanisads ask, ''What is the tajjalan from which all things spring, into which they are resolved and in which they live and have their being 2 The Brhad-araiiyaka Upanisad maintains that the ultimate reality is being, san-matram hi brahma Since nothing is without reason there must be a reason why something exists rather than nothing There is something, there is not nothing The world is not self-caused, self-dependent, self-mamtaimng All philo- sophical investigation presupposes the reality of being, asti- tva-nislha 3 The theologian accepts the first principle of being as an absolute one, the philosopher comes to it by a process of mediation By logically demonstrating the impossibility of not-being in and by itself, he asserts the necessity of being Being denotes pure affirmation to the exclusion of every possible negation It expresses simultaneously God's consciousness of himself and his own absolute self-absorbed being We cannot live a rational life without assuming the reality of being Not- being is sometimes said to be the first principle * It is not absolute non-being but only relative non-being, as compared with later concrete existence > RV III 54 CU III 14 i.scealsoTU III i,SU I i 3 Cp 'I hen God said to Moses "I am that I Am" ' Exodus III 14 1 here is a familiar distinction between nastilia and Bslilta The jieTy/t/ifi thinks that nothing exists except what we sec, feel, touch and measure The tlslifra is one who holds with R V X 31 8 naxtavad enu paro anyad astt, there is not merely this but there is also a transcendent other « rU II 7.CU III 19 t-3 Introduction 55 Even as the nyagrodha tree is made of the subtle essence which \vc do not perceive, so is this world made of the infinite Brahman 1 'It is at the command of that Imperishable that the sun and the moon stand bound in their places It is at the command of that Imperishable that the heaven and the earth stand each m its own place It is at the command of that Imperishable that the very moments, the hours, the days, the nights, the half-months, the months, the seasons and the years have their appointed function in the scheme of things It is at the command of that Imperishable that some nvers flow to the cast from the snow-clad mountains while others flow to the west '* When Balaki defines Brahman as the person in the sun {adUyc put and successively as the person m the moon, in lightning, in ether, m wind, in fire, m the waters, also as the person m the mind, m the shadow, in echo and in the body, King Ajatasatru asks, 'Is that all?' When Balaki con- fesses that he can go no farther, the king says, 'He who is the maker of all these persons, he, verily, should be known ' Brahman is satyasya satyam, the Reality of the real, the source of all existing things J In some cosmological speculations the mysterious principle of reality is equated with certain naturalistic elements Water is said to be the source of all things whatsoever 4 From it came satya, the concrete existent Others like Raikva look upon air as the final absorbent of all things whatsoever, including fire and water 5 The Hatha Upantsad tells us that fire, having entered the universe, assumes all forms. 6 The Chandogya Upani- sad, however, makes out that fire is the first to evolve from the Primaeval Being and from fire came water and from water the earth At the time of dissolution, the earth is dissolved in water, and water in fire and fire in the Primaeval Being 7 Akaia, ether, space, is sometimes viewed as the first principle In regard to the development of the universe, tne Upanisads ' CU VI 12 For the usage of the world as a tree, seeR V I 164 20, i t? 0 5 ' 43 r that +1P J? 1 8 9 Au § ustul e m his Conjcssions expresses the thought n» f. 7?1 gs ot the world declare through their visible appearance j ^ttatttey are created XI 4 5 ° y II 1 i B.U V = t ' VI g. 4 < B.U V 5 1 5 C U IV 3 1-2 « II 5 56 The Principal Upam$ads look upon the earliest state of the material world as one of extension m space, of which the characteristic feature is vibration represented to us by the phenomenon of sound From akaia, vayit, air arises Vibration by itself cannot create forms unless it meets with obstruction The interaction of vibrations is possible in air which is the next modification To sustain the different forces, a third modification arises, icjas, of which light and heat are the manifestations We still do not have stable forms and so the denser medium of water is pro- duced A further state of cohesion is found in earth The development of the world is a process of steady grossemng of the subtle akaia or space All physical objects, even the most subtle, are built up by the combination of these five elements Our sense experience depends on them By the action of vibration comes the sense of sound, by the action of things in a world of vibrations the sense of touch, by the action of light the sense of sight, by the action of water the sense of taste, by the action of earth the sense of smell In the Tatthriya Upamsad* the pupil approaches the father and asks him to explain to him the nature of Brahman He is given the formal definition and is asked to supply the content by his own reflection 'That from which these beings are born, that m which when born they live, and that into which they enter at their death is Brahman ' What is the reality which conforms to this account? The son is impressed by material phenomena and fixes on matter (anna) as the basic principle He is not satisfied, for matter cannot account for the forms of life He looks upon life (prana) as the basis of the world Life belongs to a different order from matter Life, again, cannot be the ultimate principle, for conscious phenomena are not commensurate with living forms There is something more in consciousness than in life So he is led to, believe that con- sciousness (manas) is the ultimate principle But consciousness has different grades The instinctive consciousness of animals is quite different from the intellectual consciousness of human beings So the son affirms that intellectual consciousness (vijnana) is Brahman Man alone, among nature's children > III Introduction 57 has the capacity to change himself by his own effort and trans- cend his limitations Ex'en this is incomplete because it is subject to discords and dualities Man's intellect aims at the attainment of truth but succeeds only m making guesses about it; there must be a power m man which sees the truth unveiled Adeeper principle of consciousness must emerge if the funda- mental intention of nature, which has led to the development of matter, life, mind, and intellectual consciousness, is to be accomplished The son finally arrives at the truth that spiritual freedom or delight {ananda), the ecstasy of fulfilled existence is the ultimate principle. Here the search ends, not simply because the pupil's doubts are satisfied but because the pupil's doubts are stilled by the vision of Self-evident Reality. He apprehends the Supreme Unity that lies behind all the lower forms The Upamsad suggests that he leaves behind the discursive reason and contemplates the One and is lost in ecstasy 1 It concludes with the affirmation that absolute Reality is satyam, truth, jMnam, consciousness, anantam, infinity. There are some who affirm that ananda is the nearest approxi- mation to Absolute Reality, but is not itself the Absolute Reality. For it is a logical representation The experience gives us peace, but unless we are established in it we have not received the highest In this account, the Upanisad assumes that the naturalistic theory of evolution cannot be accepted The world is not to be viewed as an automatic development without any intelligent course or intelligible aim Matter, life, mind, intelligence are different forms of existence with their specific characteristics 1 Cp Jalal-uddin Ruml 'I died a mineral and became a plant, I died a plant and rose an animal, I died an animal and I was man Why should I fear' When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar With the blessed angels, but even from angelhood I must pass on All except God perishes When I have sacrificed my angel soul, I shall become that which no mind ever conceived. O, let me not exist < for Non-existence proclaims, "To him we shall return " ' 58 The Principal Upamsads and modes of action, each acting on the other but not derived from each other The evolution of life in the context of matter is produced not by the material principle but by the working of a new life-principle which uses the conditions of matter for the production of life Life is not the mechanical resultant of the antecedent co-ordination of material forces, but it is what is now called an emergent. We cannot, by a complete knowledge of the previous conditions, anticipate the subsequent result There is an element of the incalculable Life emerges when the material conditions are available, which permit life to organise itself m matter. In this sense, we may say that matter aspires for life, but life is not produced by lifeless particles So also life may be said to be aspiring for or be instinct with mind, which is ready to emerge when conditions enable it to organise itself in living matter Mind cannot be produced from things without mind When the necessary mental conditions are prepared, intelligence qualifies the mental living creature Nature is working according to this fundamental intention, which is being accomplished because it is essentially the instrument of the Supreme Being The world is not the result of meaningless chance There is a purpose working itself out through the ages It is a view which modem science confirms By interpreting the fragmentary relics of far remote times, science tells us how this earth in which we live was gradually adapted to be a place where life could develop, how life came and developed through uncounted centuries until animal consciousness arose and this again gradually developed, until apparently, man with self-conscious reason appeared on the scene. The long record of the develop- ment of the human race and the great guts of spiritual men like the Buddha, Socrates, Jesus make out that man has to be trans- cended by God-man It cannot be argued that, when material particles are organised in a specific way, life arises The principle of organisation is not matter The explanation of a thing is to be sought in what is above it in the scale of existence and value and not below it Matter cannot raise itself It moves to a higher level by the help of the higher itself It cannot undergo inner development without being acted upon by something above it The lower Introduction 59 is the material for the higher. Life as the matter for mind and form for physical material- so also intellect is form for the mind and matter for the spirit The eternal is the origin of the actual and its nisus to improvement. To think of it as utterly trans- cendent or as a future possibility is to miss its incidence in the actual We cannot miss the primordiality of the Supreme, 'Verily, m the beginning this world was Brahman ' l There is the perpetual activity of the Supreme in the world The Upanisad affirms that Brahman on which all else depends, to uhich all existences aspire, Brahman which is sufficient to itself, aspinng to no other, without any need, is the source of all other beings, the intellectual principle, the perceiving mind, life and body It is the principle which unifies the world of the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist, the logician, the moralist and the artist. The hierarchy of all things and beings from soulless matter to the deity is the cosmos. Plato's world-architect, Aristotle's world-mover belong to the cosmos. If there is ordered development, progressive evolution, it is because there is the divine principle at work in the universe. Cosmic process is one of universal and unceasing change and is patterned on a duality which is perpetually in con- flict, the perfect order of heaven and the chaos of the dark waters Life creates opposites, as it creates sexes, in order to reconcile them 'In the beginning the woman (Orvafi) went about in the flood seeking a master' 1 Indra, for example, divided the world into earth and sky. He 'produced his father and mother from his own body.' This conflict runs through the whole empirical world, and will end when the aim of the universe is accomplished. Creation moves upward towards the divine. When the union between the controlling spirit and the manifesting matter is completed, the purpose of the world, the end of the evolutionary process, the revelation of spirit on earth is accomplished The earth is the foothold of God, the mother of all creatures whose father is heaven 3 1 BU I 4 lo-n.MaitrtVI 17. 1 weftanff sahle pahm Jaimwtya Upamsad Brahnana I 5 6 ivlJ£? C ™ iese behev <* *at Chien (Heaven) is the father and Khan l*iartn) is the mother of all terrestrial existence Zeus as Sky-father is m 6o The Principal Upamsads The conflict is not final The duality is not a sterile dualism Heaven and earth, God and matter have the same origin As regards the primordial God Hiranya-gaibha, a circular process is found The primal being spontaneously produces the primeval water, from this comes the primordial God as the first born of the divine Order, the golden germ of the world 'who was the first seed resting on the navelof the unborn ^Huanya-garbha who is the World-soul expresses his spirit through the environ- ment He manifests the forms contained within himself The world is fixed in him as are the spokes m the hub of a wheel He is the thread, suttatman, on which all beings and all worlds are strung like the beads of a necklace He is the first-born, prathama-ja He is also called Biahma and these Bta/wids are created from world to world 5 In the Rg Veda,3 Huanya-garbha is the golden germ which enters into creation after the first action of the creator In the Samkhya, prakrti is treated as unconscious and develops on account of the influence of the multitude of individual subjects, and the first product of development is mahat, the great one, or buddhi, the intellect It is the development of cosmic uitelli- essential relation to Earth-mother The two are correlative See A B Cook Zeus (1914), Vol I, p 779 Zoroaster reaches the conception of a single spiritual God, Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda, in whom the principle of good is personified, while the evil principle is embodied m Ahranan, or Angra Mainyu, who limits the omnipotence of Ahura Mazda The whole creation is a combat betw een the t« o The tw o principles strive eternally m life, and in this struggle men take part Man is responsible for his actions, good or bad If he struggles against evil, confesses God and cares for the punty of his body and soul, then after four periods of three thousand years each in the world's history a time shall arrive for the final victory of good over evil, of Ormuzd over Ahnman The general resurrection of the dead and the last judgment will take place then, assuring him of his place among the saved and the righteous The Jews adopted the two principles of good and evil and they were taken over by Christianity When Blake speaks, of the marriage of Heaven and Hell, Hea'\ en represents the one clear light over all and Hell the dark world of passion and the senses Divided, both are equally barren, but from their umon springs joy 'Oh that man would seek immor- tal moments 1 Oh that men could converse with God' was Blake's cry « RV X 82, IV 58 5 1 'God once created Brahma Hiranya-garbha and delivered the Vedas to him ' S B I 4 1. 3 X 121 1 Inboduclian 61 gcncc or Hvanya-garbha On the subjective side, buddht is the first element of the hnga or the subtle body. It js the essence of the individual spirit Buddht serves as the basis for the develop- ment of the principle of individuation, ahamkara, from which are derived, on the one hand, mind and the ten sense organs, five of perception and five of action and, on the other hand, the subtle elements from which arise m their turn the gross elements. Saliva is buddht, the innermost of the three circles, the outer being rajas and lamas which arc identified with ahamkara and manas, which are the emanations of ra;a? and lamas The saliva or the buddht is the btja, the seed of the living individual, since it contains the seeds of karma which develop at each birth into a sense-organism The saliva or lutga is called the ego, the jtva As the buddht is the siilralman of the individual, so is Huaitya-garbha the suUalman, the thread-controller of the world In the Kalha Upamsad, 1 in the development of principles the great self stands after the undeveloped and the primeval spirit Htranya-garbha, the World-soul is the first product of the principle of non-being influenced by the Eternal Spirit, Isvara. The pviuta of the Sdmkhya is the Eternal Spirit made many Htranya-garbha is the great self, mahan alma, which anses from the undiscriminated, the avyahta, which corresponds to the primitive material or waters of the Brahmanas, or the Prakrit of the Samkhya We have the Supreme Self, the Absolute, the Supreme Self as the eternal subject observing the eternal object, waters or prakrh and the great self which is the first product of this interaction of the eternal subject and the principle of objectivity The Supreme Lord, Isvara, who eternally produces, outlasts the drama of the universe S*amkara begins his commentary on the Bhagavad-gltd with the verse: 'Niirayana is beyond the unmamfest The golden egg is produced from the unmanifest The earth with its seven islands and all other worlds are m the egg.' The names and forms of the manifested world are latent in the egg as the future tree is in the seed Hiranya-garbha answers to the Logos, the Word of Western 'III io.ii,VI.7.8,seealsoKU.I. 7 62 The Principal Upam$ads thought For Plato, the Logos was the archetypal idea For the Stoics it is the principle of reason which quickens and informs matter Philo speaks of the Divine Logos as the 'first born son/ 1 'archetypal man,'* 'image of God,'3 'through whom the world was created '4 Logos, the Reason, 'the Word was in the beginning and the Word became flesh ' The Greek term, Logos, means both Reason and Word The latter indicates an act of divine will Word is the active expression of character The difference between the conception of Divine Intelligence or Reason and the Word of God is that the latter represents the will of the Supreme Vac is Brahman 5 Vac, word, wisdom, is treated in the Rg Veda as the all-knowing The first-born of Rta is Vac 6 yavad brahma tt§thah tavati vak 7 The Logos is conceived as personal like Hiranya-garbha 'The Light was the light of men ' 'The Logos became flesh ' 8 The Supreme is generally conceived as light, jyoti$am jyotxh, the light of lights Light is the principle of communication Hiranya-garbha is organically bound up with the world Himself, a creature, the first-born of creation, he shares the fate of all creation in the end 9 But livara is prior to the World-soul 10 The principle of process applies to God While he is the expres- sion of the non-temporal he is also the temporal livara, the eternal Being functions in the temporal Hiranya-garbha Ramanuja who looks upon livara as the supreme transcendent Reality above all world events treats Brahma as the demi-urge 1 1. 414. 1 I 411 3 1 6 * II 225 5 R v 1 3 21 « A iharva Veda II I 4 See Nama-RUpa and Dharma-Rupa by Maryla Falk (1943), Ch I 7 R V X 114 8 » John I 4, 5 See B F Westcott The Gospel According to St John (1886), p XVH 9 'When all things are subjected to him then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone ' I Cor XV 28 10 Cp 'Before the mountains were brought forth, or even the earth and the world were made thou art God from everlasting and world without end ' See Hebrews I 10-13 Reltgto Media 'Before Abraham was, I am, is the saying of Christ, yet is it true m some sense, if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity And in this sense, I say, the world was before the creation, and at the end, before it had a beginning ' Introduction <>3 of creation who forms the lower world in the name and bidding of God Why is the universe what it is, rather than something else? Why is there this something, rather than another? This is traced to the divine will This world and its controlling spirit are the expressions of the Supreme Lord While the World- soul and the world are organically related and are inter- dependent, there is no such relationship between the Supreme Lord and the world, for that would be to subject the infinite to the finite. The relationship is an 'accident' to use White- head's expression. This word 'accident' implies two different considerations, (1) that Divine Creativity is not bound up with this world in such a way that the changes which occur in the world affect the integrity of the Divme, and (2) that the world is an accidental expression of the Divine principle Creativity is not bound to express itself in this particular form If the choice were necessary it would not be free. Creation is the free expression of the Divine mind, %ccha-malram. The world is the manifestation of Hiranya-garblut and the creation oil&ara. The world is the free self-determination of God The power of self- determination, self-expression, belongs to God. It is not by itself. It belongs to the Absolute which is the abode of all possibilities, and by its creative power one of these possibilities is freely chosen for accomplishment The power of manifestation is not alien to being. It does not enter it from outside. It is in being, inherent in it It may be active or inactive We thus get the conception of an Absolute-God, Brahman— Ihara, where the first term indicates infinite being and possibility, and the second suggests creative freedom 1 Why should the Absolute Brahman perfect, infinite, needing nothing, desiring nothing, move out into the world? It is not compelled to do so. It may have this potentiality but it is not bound or compelled by it It is free to move or not to move, to throw itself into forms or remain formless If it still indulges its power of creativity, it is because of its free choice ' In the Taoist Tao T£ Chvng, Tao, literally 'Way,' stands for the Absolute, the drone ground and TS for 'power,' for the unfolding of the divme possibilities Cp also tathala or suchness and Slaya-vijMna the all-conserving or receptacle consciousness 64 The Pnncipal Upanisads In Isvara we have the two elements of wisdom and power, Siva and Sakti By the latter the Supreme who is unmeasured and immeasurable becomes measured and defined Immutable being becomes infinite fecundity Pure being, which is the free basis and support of cosmic existence, is not the whole of our experience Between the Absolute and the World-soul is the Creative Consciousness It is prajMna-ghana or truth-conscious- ness If sat denotes the primordial being m its undifferenced unity, satya is the same being immanent m its differentiations If the Absolute is pure unity without any extension or variation, God is the creative power by which worlds spring into existence The Absolute has moved out of its primal poise and become knowledge-will It is the all-determming principle It is the Absolute in action as Lord and Creator While the Absolute is spaceless and timeless potentiality, God is the vast self- awareness comprehending, apprehending every possibility 1 Brahman is not merely a featureless Absolute It is all this world Vayu or air is said to be manifest Brahman, pratyaksam brahma The Svetdivataia Upamsad makes out that Brahman is beast, bird and insect, the tottering old man, boy and girl Brahman sustains the cosmos and is the self of each individual Supra-cosmic transcendence and cosmic universality are both real phases of the one Supreme In the former aspect the Spirit is m no way dependent on the cosmic manifold, m the latter the Spirit functions as the principle of the cosmic manifold The supra-cosmic silence and the cosmic integration are both real The two, mrguna and saguna Brahman, Absolute and God, are not different Jayatirtha contends that Samkara is wrong in holding HasXBrahman is of two kinds — brahmano dvairupyasya aprdmdmkatvdt * It is the same Brahman who is described in different ways J Eckhart says 'God and Godhead are as different as heaven from earth . God becomes and unbecomes ' 'All in Godhead is one, and of this naught can be said God works, but Godhead works not There is no work for it to do and no working in it Never did it contemplate any- thing of work God and Godhead differ after the manner of working and not working When I come into the Ground, into the depths, into the flow and fount of Godhead, none will ask me whence I have come or whither I go None will have missed me, God passes away ' Sermon LVT Evans' E T 1 Nyaya-sndha, p 124 Inhoduclian 65 The personality of God is not to be conceived on the human lines He is not to be thought of as a greatly magnified person. We should not attribute to the Divine human qualities as wc know them.' Wc have (1) the Absolute, (2) God as Creative power, (3) God immanent in this world. These are not to be regarded as separate entities They are arranged in this order because there is a logical priority The Absolute must be there with all its possibilities before the Divine Creativity can choose one. The divine choice must be there before there can be the Divine immanent in this world. This is a logical succession and not a temporal one The world-spin I must be there before there can be the world We thus get the four poises or statuses of reality,' the Absolute, Brahman, (2) the Creative Spirit, Ihiara, (3) the World-Spirit, Hnanya-gaibha, and (4) the World This is the way m which the Hindu thinkers interpret the integral nature of the Supreme Reality. Mandiikya Upam$ad says that Biahman is catus-fiat, four-footed, and its four principles are Brahman, Ihara, Huanya-garbha and Vnaj 1 1 Aquinas says 'Things said alike of God and of other beings are not said either in quite the same sense or in a totally different sense but in an analogous sense ' Summa Contra Gentiles XXXIV God is not good ? r ]S ,n thc ,luman scnsc ' For who ,,atl1 known the mmd of the Lord?' Romans XI 34 God is personal, but, as Karl Barth says, 'personal in an incomprehensible way in so far as the conception of His personality surpasses all our views of personality This is so, 311st because He and He fjone is a true, real and genuine person Were we to overlook this and try to conceive God in our own strength according to our conception of personality, wc should make an idol out of God ' The Knowledge of God "»d the Service of God [1938), pp 3 iff J 1 In Plotmus we have a similar scheme (1) The One alone, the simple, tpXu^ 0ndltl0ned God beyond being of Basilides, the godhead of pv « which can only be indicated by negative terms We cannot thnf ex,stcnce oi rt. though it is not non-existent It cannot be "rougnt of as either subject or object of experience, as in it subject and w™»n!i ar / ,d ,? ntlcal 1S Pure impersonal experience or perhaps the 6 ouna 01 all experience, it is pure consciousness, ineffable supra- m «f 1S not the fiTSt cause - not the crcator S° d 14 1S cause only h,\ rL S !r Se ~ at Ifc 1S everywhere, and without it nothing could be the JZJi"? „T he tott »]igiMe world which Plotinus calls One— Many, tWht L^h n° mC il rm f ° r archetv P es Not mere Ideas or things Thw rZ 7 Z e Dmne Thmker - not me re passive archetypical pictures UnvL I * C *I e powers ™ thm the Dmne mind 11 is personal God. exmLf . be se P arated from diversity. The most perfect form of Hk£ ZT\? 01 Section, vlpis™, Divine IntellectT^t ™>»ker and thought, the personal Lord, Universal Intelligence^ The 66 The Principal Upamsads The conception of tri-suparna is developed m the fourth section of the Taithriya Upamsad The Absolute is conceived as a nest from out of which three birds have emerged, viz Vtraj, Hiranya-garbha and Isvara The Absolute conceived as it is m itself, independent of any creation, is called Brahman When it is thought of as having manifested itself as the uni- verse, it is called Vtraj, when it is thought of as the spirit moving everywhere in the universe, it is called Hvranya-garbha , when it is thought of as a personal God creatmg, protecting and destroying the universe, it is called Isvara Isvara becomes Brahma, Vtsnu and Siva when his thfee functions are taken separately 1 The real is not a sum of these It is an ineffable unity in which these conceptual distinctions are made These are fourfold to our mental view, separable only in appearance If we identify the real with any one definable state of being, however pure and perfect, we violate the unity and divide the indivisible The different standpomts are consistent with each other, complementary to each other and necessary m their unknowable Absolute is mediated to us through the Divine Intelligence This Intellectual principle of Plotinus is the livara of the Upanisads This universal intelligence makes possible the multiple universe For Plotinus this principle is the totality of divine thoughts or Ideas in Plato's sense These Ideas or Thoughts are real beings, powers They are the originals, archetypes, intellectual forms of all that exists in the lower spheres All the phases of existence down to the lowest ultimate of material being or the lowest forms of being in the visible universe are ideally present in this realm of divine thoughts This divine intellectual principle has both being and non-being It has, for Plotinus, two acts, the upward contemplation of the One and generation towards the lower (m) One and Many The soul of the All is the third, which fashions the material universe on the model of divine thoughts, the Ideas laid up within the Divine Mind It is the eternal cause of the cosmos, the creator and therefore the vital principle of the world God is envisaged as something apart from the world, its creator or artificer Human ideas of God are centred round him Plotinus does not make the sensible world a direct emanation from the Intelligible World It is the product or the creation of the World-soul, the third person of the Neo-Platonic trinity, herself an emanation from the intelligible World, the Nous Our souls are parts or emanations of the World-soul The three hypo- stases form collectively, for Plotinus, the one transcendent being The All-Soul is the expression of the energy of the Divine, even as the Intel- lectual principle is the expression of the thought or vision of the godhead (iv) The many alone It is the world-body, the world of matter without form It is the possibility of manifested form » See also Pamgala U Introduction 67 totality for an integral view of life and the world If we are able to hold them together, the conflicting views which are emphasised exclusively by certain schools of Indian Vcdanta become reconciled Absolute being is not an existing quality to be found m the things It is not an object of thought or the result of production. It forms an absolute contrast to, and is fundamentally different from, things that are, as is in its way nothingness It can be expressed only negatively or analogically It is that from which our speech turns back along with the mind, being unable to comprehend its fullness. 1 It is that which the tongue of man cannot truly express nor human intelligence conceive Samkara in his commentary on the Brahma Sutra 1 refers to an Upanisad text which is not to be found in any of the extant Upanisads Bahva, asked by Baskah to expound the nature of Brahman, kept silent. He prayed, 'Teach me, sir ' The teacher was silent, and when addressed a second and a third time he said- 'I am teaching but you do not follow The self is silence.'3 We can only describe the Absolute in negative terms. In the words of Plotmus, 'We say what he is not, We cannot say what he is.' The Absolute is beyond the sphere of predication It is the sunyata of the Buddhists It is 'not gross, not subtle, not short, not long, not glowing, not shadowy, not dark, not attached, flavourless, smell-less, eye-less, ear-less, speech-less, mmd-less, breath-less, mouth-less, not internal, not external, consuming nothing and consumed by nothing '4 It cannot be ' I U. II 4, see also Kena I 3, II, 3, Hatha I 27. 1 S B III 2 17 ' upaianto'yam atma Cp the Madhyamtka view— • peramarthalas lu aryanam tiisnbn-bhuva eva im 1 j ° nly Wl11 you see lt ' when vou cannot speak o£ it; for the raowledge of it is deep silence and the suppression of all the senses ' Hermes Tnsmegistus, Lib X 5 IV B £- Ir 8 8 ' see also 11 3 6 - IIL « 26 » IV 2 4- IV 4 22; I i 5 i4 5 " 7 ' Tlle Buddha ' according to Atnara, is an advaya-vadxn There was something formless yet complete. That existed before heaven and earth. Without sound, without substance. Dependent on nothing, unchanging. All-pervading, unfailing, 0* 68 The Principal Upanisads truly designated Any description makes It into something It is nothing among things It is non-dual, advaita It denies duality. This does not mean, however, that the Absolute is non- being It means only that the Absolute is all-inclusive and nothing exists outside it Negative characters should not mislead us into thinking that Brahman is a nonentity While it is non-empincal, it is also One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven. Its true name we do not know, Tao is the by-name we give it Tao TS'Chmg 25 A Waley's E T The Way arid its Power (1934) Plato says that the unfathomable ground of the universe, the absolute, is 'beyond essence and truth ' Plotmus describes the utter transcendence of the One thus 'Since the Nature or Hypostasis of The One is the engenderer of the All, it can Itself be none of the things in the All, that is, It is not a thing. It does not possess quality or quantity. It is not an Intellectual Principle, not a soul, It is not in motion and not at rest, not m space, not m time, It is essentially of a unique form or rather of no-form, since it is prior to form, as it is prior to movement and to rest, all these categones hold only m the realm of existence and constitute the multiplicity characteristic of that lower realm ' Enneads VI 9 3 'This wonder, this One, to which in verity no name may be given ' tbtd VI 9 5 'Our way then takes us beyond knowing, there may be no wandering from unity, knowing and knowable must all be left aside Every object of thought, even the highest, wc must pass by, for all that is good is later than this No doubt we should not speak of seeing, but we cannot help talking m dualities, seen and seer, instead of boldly, the achieve- ment of unity In this seeing, we neither hold an object nor trace dis- tinction, there is no two The man is changed, no longer himself nor self belonging, he is merged with the supreme, sunken into it, one with it Only m separation is there duality That is why the vision baffles telling We cannot detach the supreme to state it, if we have seen something thus detached, we have failed of the supreme ' Enneads VI 9 4 and 10 Pseudo-Dionysius, whose utterances were once accepted as almost apostolic authority, observes 'For it is more fitting to praise God by taking away than by ascnption Here we take ,away all things from Him, going up from particulars to universals, that we may know openly the unknowable which is hidden m and under all thmgs that may be known And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural light ' Chuang Tzu's vision of the boundless world has this 'You cannot explain the sea to a frog m a well — the creature of a narrow sphere You cannot explain ice to a grasshopper — the creature of a season You cannot explain Tao to a pedant — This view is too limited ' Waley Inlrodttclton 69 inclusive of the whole empirical world The Absolute is des- cribed as full both of light and not-light, of desire and not desire, of anger and not-angcr, of Ww and not-law, having verily filled all, both the near and the far off, the this and the that. '» Negative and positive characterisations arc given to affirm the positivity of being To say that the nature of Brahman cannot be dctmed docs not mean that it has no essential nature of its own We cannot define it by its accidental features, for they do not belong to its essence There is nothing outside it As no inquiry into its nature can be instituted without some description, its sva>upa or essential nature is said to be sal or being, cxt or consciousness and ananda or bliss 1 These are different phrases for the same being Self-being, self-consciousness and self-delight are one. It is absolute being m which there is no nothingness It is absolute consciousness in which there is no non-consciousness It is absolute bliss in which there is no suffering or negation of bliss. All suffering is due to a second, an obstacle, all delight Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (1939), PP 55~* H * i?' 05 ' Chuang-Tzu, Mystic Moralist and Social Reformer (1920) Ch XVIII Anandagin begins his commentary on Katha Upanxsad with this verse dharma dharmadyasamsrstam karya-kurana-varjitam kaladibhir avicchwnam brahma yat tan namSmy aham Paul speaks of a vision which was not to be told and had heard words not to be repeated II Corinthians 12 ff Cp Hymn of Gregory of Nyasa, 'O Thou entirely beyond all being ' 'O Lord, My God, the Helper of them that seek Thee, I behold Thee in the entrance of Paradise, and I know not what I see, for I see naught visible This alone I know, that I know not what I see, and never can know And I know not how tojnameThee, because I know not what Thou art, and did anyone say unto me that Thou wert called by this name or that, by the very fact that he named it I should know that it was not Thy name For the wall beyond which I see Thee is the end of all manner of signification in names ' Nicholas of Cusa The Vision of God. E T Salter's E T (1928) Ch XIII 'No monad or triad can express the all-transcending hiddenness of the all- transcending super-essentially super-existing super-deity ' 'God, because of his excellence, may rightly be called Nothing,' says Scotus Engena » BTJ IV 4 5 lia 4, 5 Katha 1 2 20-21, I 3 15, II 6 17 M.U. 1 1 6,1 7 SU V 8-10 * They are not so much qualities of Biahnum as the very nature of Brahman Commenting on the passage Brahman is truth, wisdom and infinity, satyam jUanam anantam brahma, £ wntes satyadim h% trim vtiesanarthant padam vtiesyasya brahmanah 70 The Principal Upatusads arises from the realisation of something withheld, by the over- coming of obstacles, by the surpassing of the limit It is this delight that overflows into creation The self-expression of the Absolute, the creation of numberless universes is also traced to Brahman All things that exist are what they are, because of the nature of Brahman as sat, ctt and dnanda All things are forms of one immutable being, variable expressions of the invariable reality To describe Brahman as the cause of the world is to give its tatastha or accidental feature 1 The defining characteristics are m both cases due to our logical needs 2 When the Absolute is regarded as the basis and explanation of the world, he is conceived as the lord of all, the knower of all, the inner controller of all 3 God has moved out everywhere sa paryagdt The Svetdsvatara Vpamsad speaks of the one God, beside whom there is no second, who creates all the worlds and rules with His powers, and at the end of time rolls them up again * He lives m all thmgss and yet transcends them The Universal Self is like the sun who is the eye of the whole universe and is untouched by the defects of our vision 6 He is said to fill the whole world and yet remain beyond its confines 'Venly motionless like a lone tree does the God stand in the heaven, and yet by Him is this whole world filled "I The distraction between Brahman m itself and Brahman m the universe, the transcendent beyond manifestation and the transcendent in manifestation, the indeterminate and the determinate, nirguno gunl, is not exclusive 8 The two are like two sides of one reality The Real is at the same time being realised In the metrical Upanisads, as in the Bhagavad-gUa, the per- 1 iatasthatvam ca laksya-svarupa-bahir-bhulatvam Stddhanta-Ieia-sam- graha (Kumbbakonam ed ), p 53 * They are said to be kalpita or constructed, as the non-dual Brahman is said to possess these qualities on account ,of its association with antahkarana They are manifestations through an imperfect medium and therefore limited revelations of Brahman 3 MaU 6 4 III 2 3, VI 1-12 5BUI47SUII17 <■ Hatha II 5 11 7 S U III 9 8 Cp Eckhart 'The Godhead gave all things up to God The Godhead is poor, naked and empty as though it were not, it has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not It is God who has the treasure and the bnde in him, the Godhead is as void as though it were not ' Introduction 7 1 sonal is said to be superior to the superpersonal. 1 puru?an na param Mwit, there is nothing beyond the person. It is doubtful whether the author of the Brahma Sutra accepted the dis- tinction of saguna and mrgwna m regard to Brahman. Even the mrgwna Brahman is not without determinations. The STdrakara makes a distinction between the super-personal (apurnsa-vidha) and the personal {purusa-vidha), i.e. between Brahman and Uvara The latter is not a human fancy or a concession to the weak m mind The ntrakara (formless), and the sakara (with form), are different aspects of the same Reality. The seeker can choose either in his spiritual practices In III. 3 we find that the author maintains that the aksara texts which describe Brahman negatively as 'not this, not this' are 'not useful for meditation ' 2 He holds that Brahman is unaffected by the different states, of waking, dream, sleep. The view that Brahman undergoes changes is refuted on the ground that they relate to the effects due to the self-concealment of Brahman Badarayana denies reality to a second principle. Hiranya-garbha, the World-soul is the divme creator, the supreme lord Uvara at work in this universe. A definite possi- bility of the Absolute is being realised in this world In the lipamsads the distinction between Uvara and Hiranya-garbha, between God and the World-soul is not sharply drawn If the World-soul is ungrounded in Uvara, if he is exclusively tem- poral, then we cannot be certain of the end of the cosmic process When the Upamsads assert that the individual ego is rooted w the universal self or atman, it would be preposterous to unagme that the World-soul is unrelated to Uvara or Brahman.* 1 Katha I 3 11 M U II 1 1-2. ' adhyanaya ■prayojanabhavat. Ill 3 14 , see also III 3 33 valentmus whose activity may be assigned to a d 130-150, teaches a similar view The primordial essence is the Deep (Bythos) With it Sri a „ th0Ught called also Gra ? e ( for rt ^ not conditioned) and ouence (for it made no sign of its' existence) Professor Burkitt writes M°Tm ^ "nmeasurable Deep made its own thought fecund and so pmS-i 'f 1 *! came lnt0 bem S. although it was called unique, it had a correlative side to it called Truth " " " stanrl, 1 V & " "~- ■*» uuutasumu, tiicic i;a.u uc no intelligent 1 Km! Coming Ancient History, Vol XII (1939), p 470 , Kfers t0 w orld-soul and not to the Supreme God m the P*ssage, where he asserts that 'God becomes and disbecomes ' 72 The Principal Upamsads Htraiiya-garblia who has in him the whole development m germ acts on the waters As we have seen, the image of waters is an ancient one by which human thought attempts to explain the development of the universe The waters are initially at rest and so free from waves or forms The first movement, the first disturbance, creates forms and is the seed of the universe The play of the two is the life of the universe When the de- velopment is complete, when what is m germ is manifest, we have the world-consummation Hvanya-garbha creates the world according to the eternal Veda, which has withm itself eternally the primary types of all classes of things, even as the God of the mediaeval scholastics creates according to the eternal archetype of Ideas which He as the eternal Word eternally possesses Brahman is the unity of all that is named 1 Hiranya-garbha or Brahma is the World-soul 2 and is subject to changes of the world He is karya Brahma or effect Brahman as distinct from Isvara who is karana Brahman or causal Brahman Hiranya-garbha. arises at every world-beginmng and is dissolved at every world-ending Isvara is not subject to these changes For both Samkara and Ramanuja, Hiranya-garbha has the place of a subordinate and created demi-urge livara is the eternal God who is not drawn into but directs the play of the worlds that rise and pensh and is Himself existing transcendentally from all eternity The Vedic deities are subordinate to Isvara and hold a similar position to Him in the formation and control of the world that the angelic powers and directors maintain m the heavenly hierarchy of scholasticism and of Dante We have thus the four sides of one whole (i) the transcen- dental universal being anterior to any concrete reality, (11) the causal principle of all differentiation, (m) the innermost essence of the world, and (iv) the manifest world They are co-existent and not alternating poises where we have either a quiescent Brahman or a creative Lord These are simultaneous sides of the one Reality > BU I 5 17 1 For Atman as the World-soul, see Atharva Veda X. 8 44 Introduction 73 XI ULTIMATE REALITY ATMAN The word 'atman' is derived from an 'to breathe.' It is the breath of life. 1 GraduaEy its meaning is extended to cover life, soul, self or essential being of the mdividual. Sarhkara derives atman from the root which means 'to obtain' 'to eat or enjoy or pervade all.' 1 Atman is the principle of man's life, the soul that pervades his being, his breath, prana, his intellect, prajM, and transcends them. Atman is what remains when everything that is not the self is eliminated. The Rg Veda speaks of the unborn part, ajo bhagah3 There is an unborn and so immortal element in man,4 which is not to be confused with body, life, mind and intellect These are not the self but its forms, its external expressions. Our true self is a pure existence, self-aware, unconditioned by the forms of mind and intellect. When we cast the self free from all outward events, there arises from the inward depths an experience, secret and wonderful, strange and great. It is the miracle of self-knowledge, dbna-jfid'tia.s Just as, m relation to the universe, the real is Brahman, while name and form are only a play of manifestation, so also the individual egos are the varied expressions of the One Universal Self. As Brahman is the eternal quiet underneath the drive and activity * SttnStevalah R.V. VII 87. 2. 5 apnoter alter atater va § on A.U. I. I. Cp also yac cSpnoti yad Matte yac catti vtsayan tha yac cSsya santalo bhavas tasmSd atmeti Hriyate. 3 X 16 4 * Sayana says ajah janana-rahttak, ianrer.dri}abhSgavyatiriHah, ^ra-ptmisa-lal'satto-yo'bhSgo'sii. Ecfchart quotes -with approval an wmamed heathen philosopher as saying 'Discard all this and that and nere and there and be thyself -what thon art in thine inner not-being', which he adds is mens b^x^- lna ^" rnS ^' 3S ^ S ns to m ^. uire ^ xlia *k e BSfrtt" 6 °f our inward Who am I? How came this world? What is it? How came death and birth? Thus inquire Within yourself; great will be the benefit (yon will derive from such foquiry). ro ham, fraiham idam, kith va, Patham tr.arana-jar.mam wcarayantare vetlham mahat tat phalatn esyasi. I. 40 74 The Principal Upanisads of the universe, so Atman is the foundational reality under- lying the conscious powers of the individual, the inward ground of the human soul There is an ultimate depth to our life below the plane of thinking and striving 'The Atman is the super- reality of the jiva, the individual ego The Chdndogya Upamsad gives us a story, where gods and demons both anxious to learn the true nature of the Self approach Pra]a-pati who maintains that the ultimate self is free from sin, free from old age, free from death and grief, free from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing and imagines nothing It is the persisting spirit, that which remains constant in all the vicissitudes of waking, dream and sleep, death, rebirth and deliverance The whole account assumes that there is consciousness even in the apparently unconscious states, when we sleep, when we are drugged or stunned The gods sent Indra and the demons Virocana as their representatives to learn the truth The first suggestion is that the self is the image that we see in the eye, in water or m a mirror The con- ception of the self as the physical body is inadequate To indicate that what we see in another's eye, a pail of water or a mirror is not the true self, Pra]a-pati asked them to put on their best clothes and look again Indra saw the difficulty and said to Pra]a-pati that as this self (the shadow m the water) is well adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well cleaned, so that self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes Such a view cannot be accepted If the self is not tKe body, may it be the dreaming self? The second suggestion is that the true self is "he who moves about happy in dreams ' Again a difficulty was felt Indra says that, though it is true that this dreaming self is not affected by the changes of the body, yet in dreams we feel that we are struck or chased, we experience pain and shed tears We rage m dreams, storm with indignation, do things perverted, mean and malicious Indra feels that the self is not the same as dream-consciousness The self is not the composite of mental states, however independent they may be of the accidents of the body. Dream states are not self-existent Indra again approaches Introduction 75 Praja-pati who gives him another suggestion that the self is the consciousness in deep sleep Indra feels that, in that state, there is consciousness neither of the self nor of the objective world Indra feels that he does not know himself nor does he know anything that exists He is gone to utter annihilation. But the self exists even m deep sleep Even when the object is not present, the subject is there The final reality is the active universal consciousness, which is not to be confused with either the bodily, or the dreaming consciousness or the consciousness in deep sleep. In the state of deep, dreamless sleep, the self wrapped round by the intellect has no consciousness of objects, but is not unconscious The true self is the absolute self, which is not an abstract metaphysical category but the authentic spiritual self The "other forms belong to objectified bemg. Self is life, not an object It is an experience, m which the self is the knowing subject and is at the same time the known object. Self is open only to self The life of the self is not set over against knowledge of it as an objective thing Self is not the objective reality, nor something purely subjective The subject-object relationship has meaning only in the world of objects, in the sphere of discursive knowledge The Self is the light of lights, and through it alone is there any light m the universe. It is perpetual, abiding light. It is that which neither lives nor dies, which has neither movement nor change and which endures when all else passes away It is that which sees and not the object seen Whatever is an object belongs to the not-self. The self is the constant witness-consciousness 1 The four states stand on the subjective side for the four lands of soul, VatSvdnara, the experiencer of gross things, Tatjasa, ™* expenencer of the subtle, Prdjna, the experiencer of the "^manifested objectivity, and the Tunya, the Supreme Self, ine Mandukya Upamsad, by an analysis of the four modes of consciousness, waking, dream, deep sleep and illumined con- sciousness, makes out that the last is the basis of the other three. S] J n Jkrough all months, years, seasons and kalpas, through all {divi- i ot time) past and future the consciousness remains one and self- ""mnous It neither rises nor sets fiasabda-yttga-kalpesu gatagamyesv anehatha nodeit nasiam ety eka samvid esa svayam-prabha. Panca-da&i I 7. 76 The Principal Upamsads On the objective side we have the cosmos, Virdj, the World-soul Hiranya-garbha, the Supreme God, Isvara, and the Absolute, Brahman 1 By looking upon Isvara as prajna, it is suggested that the supreme intelligence who dwells m the sleeping state holds all things in an unmanifested condition The divine wisdom sees all things, not as human reason does in parts and relations, but m the orgmal reason of their existence, their pnmal truth and reality It is what the Stoics call spermahkos or the seed Logos which is manifested m conscious beings as a number of seed logoi In treatises on Yoga, the potential all-consciousness of the state of sleep is represented m the form of a radiant serpent called Kundahni or Vdg-devT We come across this representation m earlier treatises also In the Rg Veda, Vac is said to be the serpent queen, sarpa-rajni * The process of Yoga consists m rousing the radiant serpent and lifting it up from the lowest sphere to the heart, where m union vathprdna or life-breath its universal nature is realised and from it to the top of the skull It goes out through an opening called brahma-randhra to which corresponds in the cosmic organism the opening formed by the sun on the top of the vault of the sky 1 Cp William Law 'Though God is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee m the deepest and most central part of thy soul The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him, nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His habitation m thee But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul This depth is the unity, the eternity — I had almost said the infinity of thy soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God ' Quoted m Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley (1944), P 2 Again, 'My Me is God, nor do I recognise any other Me except my God Himself ' St Catherine of Genoa (ibid , p 11 ) Eckhart 'To gauge the soul we must gauge it with. God, for the Ground of God and the Ground of the soul are one and the same ' {ibid , p 12} Agam 'The highest part of the soul stands above time and knows nothing of time ' 'There is a principle m the soul altogether spiritual I used to call it a spiritual light or a spark But now I say that it is free of all names, void of all forms It is one and simple, as God is one and simple ' > 1 X 189, X 125 3 Alharva Veda IV 1 Introduction 77 XII BRAHMAN AS ATMAN In the early prose Upanisads, atman is the principle of the individual consciousness and Brahman the superpersonal ground of the cosmos Soon the distinction diminishes and the two are identified God is not merely the transcendent numinous other, but is also the universal spirit which is the basis of human personality and its ever-renewing vitalising power Brahman, the first principle of the universe, is known through atman, the inner self of man In the Satapatha Brahmana 1 and the Chandogya Upanisad 2 it is said 'Verily this whole world is Brahman,' and also 'This soul of mine within the heart, this is Brahman ' 'That person who is seen in the eye, He is atman, that is Brahman '3 God is both the wholly other, transcendent and utterly beyond the world and man, and yet he enters into man and lives in him and becomes the inmost content of his very existence 4 Narayana is the God m man who lives in constant association with nara, the human being. He is the immortal dwelling in the mortals 5 The human individual is more than the universe He lives independently in his own inexpressible infinity as well as in the cosmic harmonies We can be one with all cosmic existence entering into the cosmic consciousness We become superior \ $tt X * 111 14 1 B»»r . 4 10 C P Keith 'It is impossible to deny that the Atman- ora&man doctrine has a long previous history in the Brahmanas and is t elopment of the ldea of umt y of * he R S Ve P h y of the Veda and the Upamsads, p 494 Heraclitus says 1 searched myself • The Logos is to be sought within, for man's nature is r w° Sm and re P r esents the nature of the whole MvnS "°^ nus '° n e that seeks to penetrate the nature of the Divine Dovn+ T>, See ^Pty mto ^ natur e of his own soul, into the Divinest wl T 3 ? 511 He must fire t make abstraction of the body, then of the all a™ Wlu ? lx budt U P bodv ' then of a11 the faculties of sense, of tovra^rtt emotions and every such triviality, of all that leans we dK^K ""^ mat K kit after this abstraction is the part which somenf +v e 4 . a ^ the lma S e 01 the Divme Mmd, an emanation preserving