Vedanta-Sutras Part I · 17 of 103

Introduction (Part 17)

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

The point we will first touch upon is the same from which we started when examining the doctrine of the Sûtras, viz. the question whether the Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in Sankara's sense, i. e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently opposed to avidyâ, by which latter term we have to understand ignorance as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge; and, again, in several places we find the knowledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with its supplementary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mundaka Up. (I, 4) applies the terms aparâ and parâ vidyâ. But a formal recognition of the essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed sometimes described as saguna and sometimes as nirguna (to use later terms); but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinction of two different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results. The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed; hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same vidyâs it is spoken of as saguna as well as nirguna.

When the mind of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world; Brahman, then, is called the Self and life of all, the inward ruler, the omniscient Lord, and so on. When, on the other hand, the author follows out the idea that Brahman may be viewed in itself as the mysterious reality of which the whole expanse of the world is only an outward manifestation, then it strikes him that no idea or term derived from sensible experience can rightly be applied to it, that nothing more may be predicated of it but that it is neither this nor that. But these are only two aspects of the cognition of one and the same entity.

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

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

In enquiring whether the Upanishads maintain the Mâyâ doctrine or not, we must proceed with the same caution as regards other parts of the system, i.e. we must refrain from using unhesitatingly, and without careful consideration of the merits of each individual case, the teaching--direct or inferred--of any one passage to the end of determining the drift of the teaching of other passages. We may admit that some passages, notably of the Brihadâranyaka, contain at any rate the germ of the later developed Mâyâ doctrine 1, and thus render it quite intelligible that a system like Sankara's should evolve itself, among others, out of the Upanishads; but that affords no valid reason for interpreting Mâyâ into other texts which give a very satisfactory sense without that doctrine, or are even clearly repugnant to it. This remark applies in the very first place to all the accounts of the creation of the physical universe. There, if anywhere, the illusional character of the world should have been hinted at, at least, had that theory been held by the authors of those accounts; but not a word to that effect is met with anywhere. The most important of those accounts--the one given in the sixth chapter of the Khândogya Upanishad--forms no exception.

There is absolutely no reason to assume that the 'sending forth' of the elements from the primitive Sat, which is there described at length, was by the writer of that passage meant to represent a vivarta rather than a parinâma that the process of the origination of the physical universe has to be conceived as anything else but a real manifestation of real powers hidden in the primeval Self. The introductory words, addressed to Svetaketu by Uddâlaka, which are generally appealed to as intimating the unreal character of the evolution about to be described, do not, if viewed impartially, intimate any such thing 1.

For what is capable of being proved, and manifestly meant to be proved, by the illustrative instances of the lump of clay and the nugget of gold, through which there are known all things made of clay and gold? Merely that this whole world has Brahman for its causal substance, just as clay is the causal matter of every earthen pot, and gold of every golden ornament, but not that the process through which any causal substance becomes an effect is an unreal one.

We--including Uddâlaka--may surely say that all earthen pots are in reality nothing but earth--the earthen pot being merely a special modification (vikâra) of clay which has a name of its own--without thereby committing ourselves to the doctrine that the change of form, which a lump of clay undergoes when being fashioned into a pot, is not real but a mere baseless illusion.

In the same light we have to view numerous other passages which set forth the successive emanations proceeding from the first principle. When, for instance, we meet in the Katha Up. I, 3, 10, in the serial enumeration of the forms of existence intervening between the gross material world and the highest Self (the Person), with the 'avyâkrita,' the Undeveloped, immediately below the purusha; and when again the Mundaka Up. II, 1, 2, speaks of the 'high Imperishable' higher than which is the heavenly Person; there is no reason whatever to see in that 'Undeveloped' and that 'high Imperishable' anything but that real element in Brahman from which, as in the Râmânuga system, the material universe springs by a process of real development.

We must of course render it quite clear to ourselves in what sense the terms 'real' and 'unreal' have to be understood. The Upanishads no doubt teach emphatically that the material world does not owe its existence to any principle independent from the Lord like the pradhâna of the Sânkhyas; the world is nothing but a manifestation of the Lord's wonderful power, and hence is unsubstantial, if we take the term 'substance' in its strict sense. And, again, everything material is immeasurably inferior in nature to the highest spiritual principle from which it has emanated, and which it now hides from the individual soul. But neither unsubstantiality nor inferiority of the kind mentioned constitutes unreality in the sense in which the Mâyâ of Sankara is unreal.

According to the latter the whole world is nothing but an erroneous appearance, as unreal as the snake, for which a piece of rope is mistaken by the belated traveller, and disappearing just as the imagined snake does as soon as the light of true knowledge has risen. But this is certainly not the impression left on the mind by a comprehensive review of the Upanishads which dwells on their general scope, and does not confine itself to the undue urging of what may be implied in some detached passages. The Upanishads do not call upon us to look upon the whole world as a baseless illusion to be destroyed by knowledge; the great error which they admonish us to relinquish is rather that things have a separate individual existence, and are not tied together by the bond of being all of them effects of Brahman, or Brahman itself. They do not say that true knowledge sublates this false world, as Sankara says, but that it enables the sage to extricate himself from the world--the inferior mûrta rûpa of Brahman, to use an expression of the Brihadâranyaka--and to become one with Brahman in its highest form. 'We are to see everything in Brahman, and Brahman in everything;' the natural meaning of this is, 'we are to look upon this whole world as a true manifestation of Brahman, as sprung from it and animated by it.' The mâyâvâdin has indeed appropriated the above saying also, and interpreted it so as to fall in with his theory; but he is able to do so only by perverting its manifest sense. For him it would be appropriate to say, not that everything we see is in Brahman, but rather that everything we see is out of Brahman, viz. as a false appearance spread over it and hiding it from us.

Stress has been laid 1 upon certain passages of the Brihadâranyaka which seem to hint at the unreality of this world by qualifying terms, indicative of duality or plurality of existence, by means of an added 'iva,' i.e. 'as it were' (yatrânyad iva syât; yatra dvaitam iva bhavati; âtmâ dhyâyatîva lelâyatîva). Those passages no doubt readily lend themselves to Mâyâ interpretations, and it is by no means impossible that in their author's mind there was something like an undeveloped Mâyâ doctrine. I must, however, remark that they, on the other hand, also admit of easy interpretations not in any way presupposing the theory of the unreality of the world. If Yâgñavalkya refers to the latter as that 'where there is something else as it were, where there is duality as it were,' he may simply mean to indicate that the ordinary opinion, according to which the individual forms of existence of the world are opposed to each other as altogether separate, is a mistaken one, all things being one in so far as they spring from--and are parts of--Brahman. This would in no way involve duality or plurality being unreal in Sankara's sense, not any more than, for instance, the modes of Spinoza are unreal because, according to that philosopher, there is only one universal substance. And with regard to the clause 'the Self thinks as it were' it has to be noted that according to the commentators the 'as it were' is meant to indicate that truly not the Self is thinking, but the upâdhis, i.e. especially the manas with which the Self is connected. But whether these upâdhis are the mere offspring of Mâyâ, as Sankara thinks, or real forms of existence, as Râmânuga teaches, is an altogether different question.

I do not wish, however, to urge these last observations, and am ready to admit that not impossibly those iva's indicate that the thought of the writer who employed them was darkly labouring with a conception akin to--although much less explicit than--the Mâyâ of Sankara. But what I object to is, that conclusions drawn from a few passages of, after all, doubtful import should be employed for introducing the Mâyâ doctrine into other passages which do not even hint at it, and are fully intelligible without it 1.