AN OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS-pp 1-72.
By
ROBERT ENRNES HUME.
13-PRINCIPAL UPANISHADS- Oxford University Press.
CHAPTER I:-The place of the Upanishads in the history of philosophy:-
The Upanishads play an important role in the history of philosophy is India (p.5)
CHAPTER II: -The Ups. and their place in Indian Philosophy. (5-9)
They are affected by outside influence…they are heterogeneous in their composition. Therefore “A single, well articulated system cannot be deduced from them; but underlying all their expatiations, contradictions, and unordered matter there is a general of a developing Pantheism”….(p.9)
CHAPTER III:- FIRST ATTEMPTS AT THE CONCEPATION OF A UNITARY WORLD-GROUND-pp.9-13.
Water (early Greek by Thales) –space—Non-being (A-sad)—Sad—Imperishable (aksara).
These searching for the origin and explanation of the world of phenomena. First in a phenomenal entity like water and space, and then in a super-phenomenal entity like non-being, being, or the Imperishable, had even in the Rig-and Atharva Vedas (Rv.10.72.2; 10.121.1; 10.129.1,2; 10.164.6; I.164.46) reached the conception of a necessarily unitary basis of the world and even the beginnings of monism.
Various indeed, were the conjectures regarding the world-ground. Four: Brahmanaspati, Visvakarman, Purusha, and Hiranyagarbha- besides the indefinite THAT ONE, have just been cited from the Rig-Veda. Another, Prajapati (literally ‘Lord of Creatures’) began to rise towards the end of the Vedic period, increased in prominence through the brahmanic, and continued on into the Upanishadic. But the conception which is the ground work of the Vedanta, which overthrew or absorbed into itself all other conceptions of the world-ground, was that of Brahma. Emerging in the brahmanas, it obtained in the Ups. a fundamental position which it never lost. Indeed, the philosophy of the Ups. is sometimes called Brahma-ism from its central concept.
CHAPTER IV:- THE DEVELOPMENT FO THE CONCEPTION OF BRAHMA(14-22)
Two stages are analyzable in the progress thus far: 1. The necessity for a universal, instead of a particular, world-ground led to a theory which postulated a world-ground that embraced all phenomena as parts of it. And so which gradually identified everything with the world-ground; 2. It was felt that this world-ground was in some sense a soul, co-related with the finite ego…
CHAPTER V:- THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPATION OF THE ATMAN AND ITS UNION WITH BRAHMA (pp 23-32.)
…Brahma was to be found not only in the not-self, but also in the self; that It was not only the essence of cosmical phenomena, but also of the organic and mental functions of the human person. (Brih.2.1; Kaush.4; Rv.10.90. )
After the correspondence between the ports of the bodily self and the cosmic phenomena was firmly in mind, the next step with the development of abstract thought was probably to conceive of the world as really a Soul (Atman) a universal Soul of which the individual self or soul is a minature…(Brih.1.4.7; Svet.2.15)
In the second movement, Atman being postulated as the world-ground, attempts were made to conceive of him as was the case with Brahma (Brih.1.4.17)…now with the doctrine of universal atman immanent both in the subjective and in the objective, it is no longer similarities, but parts of a unity or identities…
…Before the identification of Brahma and Atman was formal made, the two terms were hovering near each other as designations of the Ultimate world-ground as in Br.2.5.1; where to emphasize a point the phrase are used in succession; ‘This Soul (Atman), this Immortal, this Brahma, this All’. After the identification was made the two became interchangeable terms, as in Chand 8.14.1 “Brahma, that is the immortal that is the Soul (Atman)’ and Mund.2.2.9. ‘Brahman that which knowers of the Soul (Atman) do know’ (through the whole of this section, where the imperishable is being described, the terms Brahma and Atman are used differently). So the two great conceptions- Brahma, reached first realistically, the unitary cosmic ground. With outreaching towards a cosmo-anthropic ground; and Atman, the inner being of the self and the not-self, the great world-spirit-were joined, the former taking over to itself the latter conception and the two being henceforth to a considerable degree synonymous…so by comprehending Atman or Brahma everything is comprehended (Brih.2.4.7-9).
CHAPTER VI:- THE REALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE ULTIMATE UNITY, AND
THE DOCTRINE OF ILLUSION- (pp 32-42).
…All those diverse material objects, psychical functions, and mental states as such could not be regarded as the materials composing the structure of a unitary world-ground. Yet there is diversity and manifoldness in the being of the world which cannot be regarded as existing a part from the world-ground. How account for them?
In one of the old cosmologies (Tait.2.6), where Brahma wished that he were many, performed austerities, procreated from himself, it is stated that the entered into it with a double nature. “He became both the actual and the yon. Both the defined and the undefined, both the based and the non-based, both the conscious and the unconscious, both the real and the false”. Here is perhaps the first emergence of the thought which is the solution to the question put above. It is the distinction made between the so-called phenomenal and noumenal, between, the sensuously perceived and that which cannot be thus brought into consciousness, but can only be thought. This notion that there is much of reality which is not within the sphere of the sense, or within the world of what is called common-sense experiences.
…The glorious, brilliant nature of the higher Brahma is then represented by similies of the bright and shining- a saffron-coloured robe (Brih.2.3.6)…But immediately there follows the warning that the noumenal Brahma cannot be represented to the senses. indeed cannot be defined by any positive characteristics. ‘Neti’, ‘neti’; ‘Not thus’! ‘Not so’! “(Brih.2.3.6; 3.9.26). Nevertheless it is the reality of the individual phenomenal actualities. Though starting with and making use of sense data and accepting a strange pair of differentia, namely the stationary and the moving, for the actual and the yon, or for the phenomenal and the noymenal brahmans, this section nevertheless advances toward the final idealistic conception of reality, to which the pantheism of the Ups. led.
These two Brahmas, the one manifold with sense qualities, and the other a superphenomenal unity, where accepted as both real, though in different ways. (Mund.2.2.8; Prasna 5.2; Sevt. 1-13).
But this dualizing of the world-ground, this postulating of two Brahmas when the fundamental and repeated axiom of the whole Upanishadic speculation was that ‘there is only one Brahma, without a second’, induced by way of correction the further development of the previo;us conception of phenomenality. Reality is One. Diversity and manifoldness are only an appearance.
That is the real Brahma, the un-differenced unity. The lower Brahma of sense-manifoldness, in which everything appears as a self-subsistent entity, is merely and appearance due to a person’s ignorance that all is essentially one; that is, it is and illusion. So Maitri 6.3 says plainly of the two Brahma…
…It is mere ignorance (avidya) on one’s own part, then, that allows him to rest in the things of sense as the ultimate being of the world; but this ignorance, or non-knowledge, is remediable under instruction concerning the underlying unity.
But soon the conception arose that the error is attributable not so much to oneself, as to that other which hides its unitary nature. ‘There is nothing by which he is not covered, nothing by which he is not hid’ (Brih. 2.15.18)…is performing a piece of supernatural magic in appearing as many. (Brih.2.5.19).
This is the first occurrence in the Ups. of the word Maya-in the plural, be it noticed, and as a quotation from Rig-Veda 6.47.18, where it occurs many times in the meaning of ‘supernatural powers’ or ‘artifices’. It is this thought which is developed into the theory of cosmic illusion and which is expressed in Svet.4.9.10, the favorite proof-text in the Ups. of the later Maya doctrine.
The doctrine of illusion, then, was the speculative outcome of the conflict between the phenomenal and the super-phenomenal between the lower and the higher Brahma. It was the logical conclusion of the abstract presupposition as to the nature and possibilities of the pure unity which these thinkers conceived of as the essence of reality and to which they pressed on as the great goal of all their speculations. The manifold world of sense furnished no such unity and therefore had to be abandoned as illusory and unreal, in favour of that undifferenced unity to which they were driven as the basis underlying the illusory and which, just because it is beyond all sense-qualities distinctions, or limitations of any kind, is the real Brahma (Brih.4.4.20; 2.5.19; Mait.6.17)
…He is apart from all morals, causal, or temporal relations. One must put Him aside as possessed of qualities and take Him as the subtle only (Katha 2.13-14). The ultimate is void of any mark (a-linga) whatever (Katha 6.8; Svet 6.9); without qualities (nir-guna) –Svet.6.11).
How now is this kind of real Brahma to be known? The practical method, stated in Katha 2.8-9 and frequently elsewhere, that if one were taught by a competent guru, or teacher, he might find Brahma, is of course superseded. The progress of speculation had taken Brahma to that fare-off, transcendent real where it is a question whether it may be reached or know at all (Sevt. 4.19-20)…that higher Brahma is not accessible to knowledge by sense or by thought or by instruction (Kena 1.3; Tai. 2.4.9). No more than it is bare existence can be postulate (Katha 6.12). Even here the real point is dodged (Sevt.5.1; Mund.2.2.1; Kena1.3; Isa 9.10), utterly inconceivable is this supreme Brahma. The very attempt to conceive of it indicates that one does not know the essential fact about it (Kena 2.3).
Such is the outcome of a long circuitous journey to reach that ultimate unity of the reality which was dimly foreseen long before in the Rig-Veda and which had been the goal of all the succeeding speculations. What is it-we pause and ask- that has now been reached? On the one hand an illusory world and on the other hand an unknowable reality. Honestly and earnestly had the thinkers of the Ups. sought to find the true nature of this world of experience and of a beyond which constantly lured them on, but it had proved to be an ignis fatuus. Yet they did not give up in the despair of agnosticism or in the disappointment of failure. The glimpses which they had had of that final unity had frequently suggested that the self must be accounted for in the unity of being. They had found and underlying basis for the subjective and objective in the great Atman, the world-soul, like unto the self-known soul an inclusive of that, but in itself external to it. And they had found that the great Atman was identical with the great Brahma, the power of efficacy that actuates the world. But in the explanation of the phenomenal and the noumenal that Brahma had fall-en apart and vanished. One part into the illusory and the other into the unknowable.
VII-IDEALISM AND THE CONCEPTION OF PURE UNITY (pp.42-52)
…The unity for which they had been searching as if it were something outside of an apart from the self, could never be reached. Epistemological idealism must hence forth be the path traveled in order to reach the goal of an absolute unity (Brih.1.4.7; Chand 8.1.3).
Realistic pantheism has been changed into epistemological idealism. All existence is for, and in, the self. ‘The whole world is Brahma…This Soul of mine within the heart…’-(Chand. 3.14.1,3)…Thus that world-ground, that unity of being which was being searched for realistically outside of the self….is none other than the self, which had eluded cognition for the reason that, as the subject of consciousness, it could not become an object (Brih 3.7.23; 3.4.2; 2.4.14).
Here, then, is the source of that manifold diversity which has seemed to contradict the pure unity of being. It all is the thought-product of the larger real Self, apart form whom neither it nor I have any existence whatever (Chand.8.12.4-5) …The ego does not perform those activities, ‘Assuredly, the Soul (Atman) of one’s soul is called the Immortal leader (Mai. 6.7). The real illusion is not strictly the trick of the other, the great magician, but my own persistence in the vain belief that I and the world exist apart from, or are in any sense other than, the pure, undifferenced unity of the Self-or, according to the theory of realistic pantheism, the one world-all Brahma (Sevt. 1.6).
In either case knowledge of the truth banishes the illusion and restores the identity which was only temporarily sundered by ignorance…(Brih.1.4.10).
In the Atman-theory the great desideratum is union with Atman, the inner, real unitary Self-who in truth am I, if I but knew it and could realize it…(Chand.8.7.1; Mai.7.7). In the Brahma theory also it is complete unqualified unity that is the ideal (Br.4.3.32; Chan.7.23.1). This path, however, from the troubled consciousness with its limitations, sorrows and pains, to the state of unalloyed beatitude and unbounded bliss (a difficult path) (Katha 3.14).
Maitereyi, who like Indra had been perplexed by the similar instruction that the highest stage of the one Self is un-conscious (was given) a mere philosophical explanation of why it can not be conscious (Br.2.4.14 and 4.5.15)…Consciousness means consciousness of an object; but in that consciousness where all things become one (Kaush 3.4), in that unbounded ocean-like pure unity of the real Self (Br.4.3.32) the duality and limitation of the subject-object relation is obliterated. In it, therefore, consciousness is an impossibility.
The limitation of the not-self certainly would be absent in that plenary (bhuma) bliss. (Chand.7.23-24).
A sensual conception of that bliss is pictured in Brih.4.3.21; …a mere state of bliss…
The true conception of the bliss of union with the self, then, would seem to be that it is strictly an unconscious condition; but with the attempt to conceive of that condition, which indeed was asserted to be inconceivable, recourse is had to sensual experiences and to balmy sleep.
Strictly it is the state of dreamless sleep which is taken as typifying the attainment of the real. ‘Therefore they say of him “he sleeps” for he has gone to his own (Chand-6.8.1)’. This is true both in the Brahma theory and in the Atman theory ….
But even that condition of profound sleep from which one wakes refreshed back, however, into diversity and in to the limitation of the waking consciousness-seems too near the unreality of the illusory egohood which is conscious of falsely apparent objects and subjects. In the Mandukya, therefore, there is put, above the waking consciousness and the dreaming sleep and the dreamless sleep, a fourth stage (turiya Mand.7); Mai.7.11)…
Not only in sleep and in supposititious condition beyond profound slumber does one reach that unity with the Self. He does it also in death, the consummation of unification, for then the diversity and illusoriness of sense-Knowledge and separateness are overcome…(Br.4.4.1-2; Chand 8.6; 6.15)…Death is truly the loosing of the cords of the heart which bind one to an illusory life and to the thought of a separate self-existence…(Mun.3.2.7)…
Thus, from the empirical point of view which regards the waking consciousness as the real, a man does in this way ‘go straight to destruction’; but to the philosopher, who understands the falsity of ordinary standards and the illusoriness of the ego to which men fondly cling, the loss of finite individuality in the real Self that is unlimited is the supreme achievement…(Chand 6.9-10)…It is the very consciousness of ‘this’ and of ‘I’ which is the limitation that separates one from the unlimited. And individuality and self-consciousness must be lost ere one reach that infinite Real (Pras.6.5)…
Thus the ultimate unity of reality which has been the search throughout the Ups. is finally reached. On the epistemological basis of the common-sense realism which views all things as really existing just as they are seen to exist, and in continuation of the cosmologies of the Rig-Veda, the Ups. started by positing various primeval entities, out of which by various processes the manifold world was produced. Then Brahma, a power such as that inherent in the ritual and sacrifice whereby rain and the forces of nature were controlled, was postulated as the one world-producer and controller. This conception of Brahma gradually developed into a monism. Simultaneously speculation regarding the nature of the unity in which the self and objects are joined developed the conception of Atman, a great Self, after the analogy of the individual self. The Atman-theory and the Brahma-theory became merged together in an absolute pantheism. An apparent conflict between the many and the ONE led to the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Thos two under further speculation turned out to be respectively and illusory world and an unknowable reality. The theory of epistemological idealism which had been intuited previously on occasions and which had been led up to by the failure of realism, was then developed. The manifold world was seen to be the construction of the imagination, and the supreme unity was found in one’s own Self from which the ego is falsely sundered by the life of waking consciousness. That pure unity with the real which is actually effected in sleep and in death is a blissful state of consciousness in which individuality and all distinctions are overcome.
CHAPTER VIII. THE OUTCOME ON RELIGION AND ON THE DOCTRINE OF
KARMA(pp.52-57).
In the Vedic period punctilious performance of the ritual was the one means of satisfying the gods and of obtaining salvation. In the Brahmanic period a change took place similar to that in the Greek religion. That very efficacy of the sacrifice for the appeasement of the gods whereby men had been kept in subjection, turned out to be an instrument in their hands for controlling the gods, who now became the dependents and received their sustenance from such sacrifice as men might give. In the Ups. a still further change occurred. The development of a monistic philosophy removed altogether the necessity of believing in the various Vedic or Brahmanic gods to superintend and operate the different departments of nature or to be coerced into man’s service. The beginning of this subordination to the one world-all and of the later displacement of the gods as philosophic conceptions (although in popular religion the gods have continued to hold sway) is evidenced in the latter part of the Kena Up.(14-34).
…No longer is worship or sacrifice or good conduct the requisite of religion in this life, or of salvation in the next. Knowledge secures the latter and disapproves the former. The whole religious doctrine of different gods and of the necessity of sacrificing to the gods is seen to be a stupendous frand by the man who has acquitted metaphysical
knowledge of the pantheistic unity of self and of the world in Brahma or Atman (Br.1.4.6)…Therefore it is not pleasing to those (gods) that man should know this (i.e. that the gods are only a phase of Brahma and that an individual man may himself become Brahma by knowing himself to be such) (Brih.1.4.10)…
Thus religious piety is renounced as unnecessary; and knowledge of that fact, or metaphysical knowledge in general, replaces religiosity…
The doctrine of ‘karma’(literally action), the theory that according to one’s good or bad actions in this life one passes at death into the body of a higher or a lower animal. It is note worthy that in Rig-Veda there is no trace of metempsychosis…In the Rig-Veda the eschatology consisted of a belief in a personal immortality in the paradise of the gods. After ‘a preliminary sign of the doctrine of metempsychosis in the Athara-Veda’ (Hopkins, Religions of India, p.175), the notion first makes it definite appearance in the Satpatha Brahmana. In the Ups. it had not yet become what it became in later times a belief which Monier Williams has aptly characterized in the following severe statement; ‘Transmigration or metempsychosis, is the great bugbear-the tribble nightmare and daymare-of Indian Philosophers and metaphysicians. All their efforts are directed to the getting rid of this oppressive scare. The question is not, what is the truth? The one engrossing problem is, how is the man to break this iron chain of repeated existence (Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, p.41).
How his doctrine of karma and re-incarnation came to be so thoroughly accepted in India…At any rate, the belief in a person’s renewed existence in another body after death, is present in the Ups…but not as a burden of despair…
The character which is thus determinative of one’s position in the next life is formed not only by action but also by knowledge (Kaus.1.2. Kath 5.7).
CHAPTER NINE: THE OUTOCME ON PRACTICAL LIFE AND ON MORAL (58-66)
Knowledge-not ‘much learning’, but the understanding of metaphysical truths was the impelling motive of the thinkers of the Ups. Because of the theoretical importance of knowledge in that period of speculative activity, and also because of the discrediting of the popular polytheistic religion by philosophical reasoning, there took place in India during the times of the Upanishads a movement similar to that which produced the Sophists in Greece, namely, and unsettling of the accepted ethics and a substitution of knowledge for religion and morality. Knowledge was the one object of supreme value, the irresistible means of obtaining one’s ends…
Beside this practical value of knowledge and the speculative value…for attainment of the ideal unity with the*Real knowledge also had a marked ethical value.
*F.n. p.59. It is note worthy how the extreme valuation put upon both these kinds of knowledge produced a reaction a within the period of the Ups. themselves. The license to override the prescriptive usage of religion and custom which the possessor of knowledge claimed for himself, is distinctly denied in Mai. 4:3 on the point of the four customary stages in the life of every orthodox Hindu, through disregard of which the revenues of the priests were seriously diminished.
As regards speculative knowledge of Atman, its apprehension by means of human knowledge is opposed by the doctrine of ‘Prasada’ or ‘Grace’ in Katha 2.20 (with a light verbal change in Svet.3.20). It by means of this grace; according to Svet. 1.6, that an individual obtains release from illusion and reaches immortality.
An even more explicit denial of the knowledge-doctrine is found at Katha 2.23 (Mun.3.2.3), where a strict Calvinistic doctrine of election is anticipated.
…the possession of some metaphysical knowledge actually cancels all past sins and even permits the knower unblushingly to continue in ‘what seems to be much evil’, with perfect impurity, although such acts are heinous crimes are disastrous in their effect for others who lack that kind of knowledge.
But this unbridled licentiousness of the earlier Ups. could not long continue. It probably went to excess, for in the middle of the period it is sternly denounced. Good conduct was declared to be and equal requisite with knowledge-Katha 3:7-8; 2:24.
The earlier conception that the knower was able to continue in evil unharmed was true only so far as it expressed the idea that knowledge exempts from evil. (Br.4.4.23; Chand.4.14.3; Maitri 3.2; Pras 5.5 ;Mai 6.18).
The consistent pantheistic conception, however, of the relation of knowledge and moral evil is that knowledge exempts from both good and evil, and elevates the knower altogether from the region of moral distinctions to the higher one where they are not operative. (Tait.2.9; Brih.4.4.22; Mund.3.1.3)…
For this emancipation, an emancipation from the unreal and an entrance into the real, the reason is that to the knower good and evil are conceptions of partial knowledge which can no longer hold in the light of full knowledge. They are only verbal distinctions. (Chand 7.2.1).
…the Brahma-world…is free also from the ethical distinction of good and evil. (Chand 8.4.1-2; Brih 5.10; Sevt. 4.18; Kaush 1.4).
The same ethical position is held in the Atman-theory (Katha 2.14; 5.11; Isa-8)
The Atman thus being void of all ethical distinctions, the Atman-knower who by his knowledge becomes Atman like-wise transcends them in his union with Him…(Brih.4.3.21-22)…
So the final goal of metaphysical speculation and the practical attainment of supreme and imperishable value was the Soul, the larger Soul which was the ground of the individual soul and of all existence…However beautiful such a doctrine was in theory, it might very easily misunderstood and misapplied in practices, as in the case of Virochana, who is said to have lived as a pupil with Prajapati for 32 years (Ref. Chan 8.7.1-to 8.5).
The practical ethics are certainly not as high. The general teaching is that already presented, namely, that moral distinctions do no obtain for the man who has metaphysical knowledge. This is the influence effected on the Gita….in which (2.19) Krishna…equals the scruples of Arjuna over the murdering of his enemies by this Upanishadic assurance of Katha 2.19.
CHAPTER X. THE ARTIFICIAL METHOD OF UNITY IN RENUCIATION AND IN YOGA.
(to the theoretical metaphysical knowledge of unity with Atman a practical method ought to be provided.)
After knowledge has informed a person that he is Brahman or Atman, he should strictly have no more desires…(Brih.4..4.12,13,22; 3.5.1).
In actual experience, however, desires do still continue and harass one…The entertaining of any desires what so ever and the resulting activity, are conditions which from the point of view of knowledge are sheer ignorance; these react in dulling the understanding (cf. Mund.1.2.9), blind one to the limitation of existence in the world and to the series of rebirths, and maintain the person’s false separation from the real Brahma or Atman (Mund 3.2.2)…
But if the metaphysical knowledge of the essential oneness of the individual soul (atman) and the universal Soul (Atman) did not procure the blissful union with that Soul, neither does this theory of avoidance of limiting desires; for the inevitably rise up in the ordinary life of activity. The final solution of the practical problem which the Ups. offer, namely Yoga, is the outcome of that conception of strict unity which started the speculations of the Ups…The precept for effecting this (unity) is this: restraint of the breath, withdrawal of the senses (from objects), meditation, concentration, contemplation, absorption (Mai. 6.17.18).
XI. CONCLUDING ESTIMATE:-
…The thinkers were earnest in their search for truth, and they unhesitatingly abandoned conclusion which had been reached, when in the light of further reasonings and new considerations they were proved inadequate…
…the order of exposition here followed was all probability the historical order in the progress of thought in the early Hindu Philosophy, yet there are not the chronological date in the Ups. upon which an unquestioned order can be maintained throughout…The heterogeneity and unordered arrangement and even contradictions of the material make it difficult indeed impossible, to set forth in systematic exposition a single system of Philosophy.
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“…This process of killing out the idea of separateness is no inertia, so far as ordinary language is understood; and though it may not be that blind submission to the will of an anthropomorphic deity, it is certainly the highest possible activity and energy on a superior plane. It is not neglect of duty nor renunciation of the world either; it is mere forgetting of self and its environments. This is Moksa. Moksa in the Christian sense is a something to be achieved, in the Upanishad it is already achieved (my question is-if it is already achieved means some time it might have been last. So when it was last so that we can say that it is already ‘achieved’). Every being is one with the Absolute, is, in fact the Absolute; what is to be achieved is destruction of the sense of separateness, which being accomplished, moksa is easily realized.
-The Twelve Principal Upanishads.
Preface Page v. –pub. Bombay Theosophical publication Fund (00 1906)- by Rajaram Tukaram Tatya.
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