OTHER BOOKS BY
DR. W. S. URQUHART

THE HISTORICAL AND THE ETERNAL CHRIST

9

‘ I have not read anything sounder or more impressive on the subject.’

The late Principal Denny.

THE UPANISHADS AND LIFE

‘ Dr. Urquhart is not a whit behind the best of the German students of Hindu
philosophy. ... He is scrupulously fair to the Hindu faith and the Hindu
philosophy. . . . There is a whole life’s study in the book.’ Expository Times.

PANTHEISM AND THE VALUE OF LIFE, with special reference
to Indian Philosophy.

‘ The seven hundred pages may well rank with the best that have been written
upon Hindu thought. . . . They are at once destructive, constructive and
impartial. There is no connected problem which is not freely and fully dis¬
cussed to our greater enlightenment.’ Times Literary Supplement .

‘ The author has thoroughly mastered the literature of the subject and has
brought to bear upon the subject a critical acumen of a high order. Indian
readers who may not be able to agree with him in all that he says will
nevertheless give him credit for an effort to be just and impartial.’

Hindustan Review.

‘ The volume is a masterpiece both in its investigation and its criticism of
Indian philosophy.’ London Quarterly Review.

THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

‘ Dr. Urquhart’s object, which he carries out in moderate compass in a lucid
and instructive way, is to expound in popular fashion the main doctrines of
Theosophy, its antecedents, origin and growth ; and to combine with critic^m
a real appreciation of the help it can give to the understanding and practical
application of Christianity.’ Times Literary Supplement.

* Dr. Urquhart has already won his spurs in the fields of philosophic thought
by a remarkable study of Pantheism. And this book is .mSHsed by the same
qualities of insight, scholarship, logical penetration and lucidity of expression.’

British Weekly.

‘ A masterly exposition of the main doctrines of theosophy, its relation to
science and philosophy, and its religious and ethical value.’ Expository Times ,

f?4>

H- ft

THE RELIGIOUS
QUEST OF INDIA®’®’®

EDITED BY

J. N. FARQUHAR, M.A.

D.Litt. (Oxon.), Hon. D.D. (Aberdeen)

PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY

H. D. GRISWOLD, M.A., PhJD, D.D.

FORMERLY SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE
AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION IN INDIA

AND

E. C. DEWICK, M.A. (Cantab.)

LITERARY SECRETARY, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG
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INDIAN THEISM

THE HEART OF JAINISM

THE TREASURE OF THE
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REDEMPTION : HINDU
AND CHRISTIAN.

THE RELIGIOUS
LITERATURE OF INDIA.

THE RITES OF THE
TWICE-BORN.

HINDU ETHICS

THE RELIGION OF THE
RIGVEDA.

By Nicol Macnicol, M.A.,
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In Preparation

ISLAM IN INDIA . . By M. T. Titus, D.Phil

(Moradabad).

EDITORIAL PREFACE

. mi$M

npHE writers of this series of volumes on the variant forms ox
religious life in India are governed in their work by two
impelling motives.

1. They endeavour to work in the sincere and sympathetic
spirit of science. They desire to understand the perplexingly
involved developments of thought and life in India and dis¬
passionately to estimate their value. They recognize the futility
of any such attempt to understand and evaluate, unless it is
grounded in a thorough historical study of the phenomena in¬
vestigated. In recognizing the fact they do no more than share
what is common ground among all modern students of religion
of any repute. But they also believe that it is necessary to set
the practical side of each system in living relation to the beliefs
and the literature and that, in this regard, the close and direct
contact which they have each had with Indian religious life
ought to prove a source of valuable light. For, until a clear
understanding has been gained of the practical influence exerted,
by the habits of worship, by the practice of the ascetic, devo¬
tional, or occult discipline, by the social organization and by the
family system, the real impact of the faith upon the life of the
individual and the community cannot be estimated: and, without
the advantage of extended personal intercourse, a trustworthy
account of the religious experience of a community can scarcely
be achieved by even the most careful student.

2 . They seek*to set each form of Indian religion by the side
of Christianity in such a way that the relationship may stand out
clear. Jesus Christ has become to them the light of all their
seeing and they believe Him destined to be the light of the
world. They are persuaded that sooner or later the age-long
quest of the Indian spirit for religious truth and power will find
in Him at once its goal and a new starting-point, and they will
be content if the preparation of this series contributes in the

vi EDITORIAL PREFACE

smallest degree to hasten this consummation. If there be readers
to whom this motive is unwelcome, they may be reminded that
no man approaches the study of a religion without religious
convictions, either positive or negative: for both reader and
writer, therefore, it is better that these should be explicitly
stated at the outset. Moreover, even a complete lack of sym¬
pathy with the motive here acknowledged need not diminish a
reader’s interest in following an honest and careful attempt to
"bring the religions of India into comparison with the religion
which to-day is their only possible rival, and to which they
largely owe their present noticeable and significant revival.

It is possible that to some minds there may seem to be a
measure of incompatibility between these two motives. The
writers, however, feel otherwise. For them the second motive
reinforces the first: for they have found that he who would lead
others into a new faith must first of all understand the faith that
is theirs already—understand it, moreover, sympathetically,
with a mind quick to note not its weaknesses alone but that in
it which has enabled it to survive and has given it its power over
the hearts of those who profess it.

The duty of the Editors of the series is limited to seeing that
the volumes are in general harmony with the principles here
described. Each writer is alone responsible for the opinions
expressed in his volume, whether in regard to Indian religions
or to Christianity.

THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA

THE VEDANTA AND
MODERN THOUGHT

BY

W. S. URQUHART, M.A., D.Litt.

PRINCIPAL OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES COLLEGE
CALCUTTA AND PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY; FELLOW
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA ; PROFESSOR
OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALCUTTA

Author of The Historical and the Eternal Christ;

The Upanishads and Life ; 'Pantheism and the Value
of Life ; Theosophy and Christian Thought ,* &c.

HUMPHREY MILFORD
, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY
I928

PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

TO

Professor W. L. DAVIDSON, LL.D.

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

AND

Professor W. R. SORLEY, LL.D.

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, AND NOW KNIGHT-
BRIDGE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

MY TEACHERS IN PHILOSOPHY IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF
ABERDEEN
Vw A *'

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

I N the ever-increasing mass of literature which has been de¬
voted to the criticism and appreciation of Indian thought, a
tendency to extremes has constantly manifested itself. On the
one hand we find amongst outside critics signs of a disposition .
to undervalue the results of Indian speculation. Over-zealous
attempts are sometimes made to derive from alien sources the
most important elements in Oriental philosophy, and when
such attempts are shown by serious scholars to be almost alto¬
gether impossible, recourse is taken to a superior and slightly
patronizing attitude in which, no doubt, expressions of depre¬
ciation are politely avoided, but the place of genuine and sym¬
pathetic appreciation is occupied by intermittent ejaculations of
wonder as to how a people who have not had the benefits of the
cultural inheritance which the superior critics themselves enjoy,
should have been capable of so much as has actually been
accomplished in India. Needless to say, the feeling which is
aroused by an attitude of this kind amongst those upon whom
judgement is thus summarily passed, is one of irritation rather
than of gratitude.

The other extreme is undiscriminating admiration. Under
the influence of this mood, writers, both in the East and in the
West, vie with each other in asseverating that everything that is
good comes from the East, and that nothing is good which does
not come from the East. It is only by Eastern windows that
‘when daylight comes, comes in the light*. Moved by a spurious
kind of cosmopolitanism or by an almost childish desire to
vindicate their own broadmindedness, certain Western philo¬
sophers of the type here indicated have gone the length of
declaring that the Orient has a monopoly of spirituality, that the
West is blatantly materialistic, and that all the more important
elements in early European philosophy may be traced to the
Eastern influences which moulded the precursors of Plato, or to

x ii PREFACE

the currents of philosophic thought which moved from East to
West in the centuries immediately preceding or immediately suc¬
ceeding the commencement of the Christian era. Three-quarters
of a century ago Cousin described the East as The native land of
the highest philosophy’, and Schopenhauer earlier gave utter¬
ance to the unrestrained generalization that ‘in the whole world
there is no study so beneficial and elevating as that of the
Upanishads’. Writers of a later date have to an even greater
extent allowed their enthusiasm to overwhelm the undoubted
elements of truth which are contained in such assertions.
Opinions of this sort have, of course, been eagerly welcomed by
some Indian writers, who have perhaps a keener relish for the
compliment which appeals to patriotism than for the valua¬
tion which depends upon a balanced judgement. We come
across, e.g., such statements as the followingj ‘India has given
to humanity the main outlines at least of the whole of the philo¬
sophy and religion of the world !’' 1 Although, however, such
sweeping statements are by no means isolated, it would be al¬
together unfair to suggest that judgements of this kind are
passed without qualification by the generality of Indian writers
on philosophy.

A more temperate and tenable position is taken up, e.g., by
Prof. S. N. Das Gupta, who claims only that,‘most of the prob¬
lems still debated in modern philosophical thought occurred
in more or less divergent form to the philosophers of India ’. 2
It cannot certainly be contended that in the course of the world’s
history India has been responsible for the only philosophical
thought worthy of the name, but it may be argued with a con¬
siderable amount of justification that, at a very early period in
intellectual development, the greater philosophical problems had
presented themselves to the Indian consciousness and had re¬
ceived penetrating and illuminating treatment. India has had,

1 Prof. Drivedi, Introduction to the Mandukya U. II.

s Das Gupta, p. viii.

PREFACE xiii

and still has, a most important contribution to make to the
thought of the world, and is well qualified to make this contribu¬
tion by the intensity with which throughout the centuries she
has devoted herself to her philosophical and philosophico-
religious task. Rarely has metaphysical speculation afforded to
any people so absorbing an interest. As Prof. Radhakrishnan
says: 4 In many other countries reflection on the nature of exis¬
tence is a luxury of life. The serious moments are given to
action, while the pursuit of philosophy comes up as a paren¬
thesis. In ancient India philosophy was not an auxiliary to any
other science or art, but always held a prominent position of
independence.’

A study of the Vedanta leads to many general reflections on
the relations between philosophy and religion, and in particular
to the questions how far such a philosophy can satisfy religious
needs and how far it can be regarded as a preparation for
Christianity. I have tried to set forth some conclusions as to
these and allied problems. Sankara has been taken as the typical
philosopher of the school, for reasons which appear to me to be
satisfactory; and the general trend of opinion amongst Indian
writers and thinkers themselves would appear to justify this
concentration. It has been my endeavour to carry out my task
in a spirit of fairness, and to avoid the mistake of merely work¬
ing^ towards a foregone conclusion. And I have no hesitation in
saying that such studies as I have been able to make in Indian
philosophy have confirmed me in the faith that God has not
left Himself without a witness in the characteristic thought of
India, that much of it is unconsciously anticipative of Christian
thought, and that Jesus Christ will one day be recognized there
also as the ‘light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world’.

Amongst the many books which have been consulted, I have

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 22.

xiv PREFACE

found the first volume of Prof. Radhakrishnan’s Indian Philo¬
sophy, the first volume of Prof. S. N. Das Gupta’s History of
Indian Philosophy, and Dr. J. N. Farquhar’s Outline of the
Religious Literature of India specially useful as works of re¬
ference. Dr. Farquhar, also, and the Rev. E. C. Dewick have
given me much help in the preparation of my manuscript for
the press. I should like to express finally my great indebtedness
to my wife for many useful suggestions and for much assistance
in reading both manuscript and proofs.

W. S. URQUHART.

Scottish Churches College,

Calcutta, 1928.

CONTENTS

I. Introductory. The Affiliations and the Importance
of the Vedanta. Vedantic Ideas in the Vedas

11. Anticipations of Vedantic Ideas in the Upanishads.
The Vedanta Sutras. The Gita. The Karikas of
Gaudapada .......

III. Sankara and Ramanuja: Their Lives, their Com¬
mentaries, and their Traditional Philosophical
Significance .......

IV. The Approach to Sankara’s Central Teaching.
Preliminary Conditions. His Conception of Au¬
thority. The Idealistic Attitude. His Relation to
Buddhism .......

V. The Ultimate Unity. The Two Orders of Know¬
ledge. The Place of Works

VI. The Doctrines of Maya and Avidya. Relation to
Kant. The God of Qualities . ...

VII. The Destiny of the Individual Soul. The Place of
• Ethics in the Vedanta .....

VIII. Some Comparisons between the Vedanta and
Modern Philosophical Thought

IX. The Religious Value of the Vedanta, and Some
Conclusions . . .

Index .

• 25!

ABBREVIATIONS

Aiyar: C. N. Krishnaswami Aiyar, Life and Times of Sankara*

Carpenter: Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, Theism in Medieval India.

Das Gupta: Prof. S. N. Das Gupta, A History of Indian Philosophy.
Deussen, S. V.: Deussen, System of the Vedanta , Chicago, 1912.

Deussen, P. U.: Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads.

Farquhar: Dr. J. N. Farquhar, Outline of the Religious Literature of India.
Goreh: Nehemiah Goreh, Mirror of Hindu Philosophical Systems.

Griswold: Dr* H. D. Griswold, The Religion of the Rigveda.

Happel: Happel, Grundanschauungen der Inder.

J. R. A. S.: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Kirtikar: Vasudeva J. Kirtikar, Studies in Vedanta.

Muller, S. S.: Max Muller, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy.

Pal: D..N. Pal, Sankara the Sublime.

Pringle-Pattison: Prof. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God.

Radhakrishnan: Prof. S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy.

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (trans. by Haldane
and Kemp).

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

S. B. Hr. Sacred Books of the Hindus.

Sen: Mr. P. N, Sen, Philosophy of the Vedanta.

Shastri, B. K.: Prof. B. K. Shastri, The Bhakti Cult in Ancient India.

Shastri, K.: Prof. Kokileswar Shastri, The Advaita Philosophy.

Shastri, P. D.: Prof. P. D. Shastri, The Doctrine of Mayd.

U.: Upanishads.

INTRODUCTORY. THE AFFILIATIONS AND
IMPORTANCE OF THE VEDANTA. VEDANTIC
IDEAS IN THE VEDAS'

A COMP ARISON between Eastern and Western philosophy
should aim at proving, not that one is superior to the other,
but rather that the one may be supplemented or corrected by
the other. When the prevailing points of view are different and
origins and methods so diverse, it is to be expected that the
resulting philosophies will present strikingly contrasted virtues
and limitations, and that fullness of truth can be reached only
through co-operation. Max Muller, e.g., was acutely conscious
of the narrowness of conception which might arise from an
exclusive nurture on the thought of the Jews, the Greeks, or the
Romans, and felt that from India especially we might derive
‘that correction which is wanted in order to make our inner life
more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact,
more truly human’. 1 Thus, in seeking for that unity which is
behind all the diversity of the history of thought, we must not
be too anxious to discover unity at the expense of diversity.
Such haste has led to many futile efforts to establish affiliations
and derivations which are hardly warranted by the facts. Simi¬
larities indeed there are, fundamental and impressive, but the
differences must also be clearly kept in view, if the fullness of
the co-operative work of the human spirit is to be realized; and
these differences, as Emerson reminds us, 2 are no more sur¬
prising than the variety of the acts of one man in which we
recognize the same character.

The broad and deep similarities between Greek and Indian
thinkers have frequently been noted, so that there is not much
risk of our forgetting them. Many recent writers have found an
almost complete accord, e.g. between the Vedanta and the
abstract philosophy of the Greek Eleatics. For Parmenides,
amongst the latter, the only reality is the one and indivisible
Being, destitute of qualities and superior to all distinctions of
place and changes in time. And did not Plato, equally with his

- India, What Can It Teach Us?, 6. 3 Essay on History.

2 AFFILIATIONS AND IMPORTANCE

Eastern fellow searchers after truth, seek for an eternal beyond
change and an essential reality behind appearances—a universal
Being in which all particularity is merged? Yet even in regard
to that ultimate reality which was the common object of search,
there are important differences between Indian and Greek con¬
ceptions. The Hindu philosopher seemed from the first to rebel
against the thought of limits, whereas for the Greek, except at
a very early stage, the unlimited seemed to be metaphysically
undesirable. He sought above all for clarity and precision of
conception, whilst to the Indian mind the one which was the
goal of his endeavour was attractive just because of its vague¬
ness, and because it could not properly be described either as
Being or non-Being. The Indian thinker could not intellectualize
this Being, and did not wish to do so, but only to grasp it by in¬
tuition, under an overpowering sense of that mysterium tremen -
dum which a recent writer has emphasized as the essence of the
religious consciousness . 1 The Being of the Vedanta has indeed
many points of similarity to the Being of Plato, but the latter
does not emphasize so earnestly, or rest so contentedly in, a
transcendent reality, and it is with a certain amount of reluc¬
tance that he falls back on the aid of those myths through which
alone he feels that he can hint at its character. Thus, when he
relies on philosophy alone, the Being of Plato tends to become
more fully intellectualized than the Being of the Vedanta.
Plato obtains a logical, if not an actual, transition from the One
to the Many, whereas the Eastern philosopher is content with
a vaguer fundamental unity from which there cannot be a
logical transition to the multiplicity of the world, and in con¬
trast to whose impenetrable vastness the particularity of ordinary
experience is best explained by being left unexplained. In fact
it is even doubtful whether in an Indian connexion we are justi¬
fied in making use of the phrase mysterium tremendum ; for this
might be taken to suggest a Reality which might some day be
explained, whereas the Indian thinker was rather inclined to
the idea of a reality which he neither hoped nor desired to
explain.

It can, perhaps, be said with truth that it is in the philosophy
of religion that India has made her greatest contribution to the
1 Cf, Otto , Das Heilige, passim.

OF THE VEDANTA 3

thought of the world. Nowhere is it altogether possible to draw
a hard-and-fast line between the philosophy of religion and
philosophy in general, but this distinction is least of all admis-
sible in India, where it might be said that the conditions and
intensity of the search for a solution of life’s problems and the
,character of the solutions offered alike invite to a religious
attitude. The almost despairing realization of the need for
deliverance, together with the indefiniteness of the Reality
which is conceived to be the only refuge, predisposes the
searcher to a mystical mood and makes it impossible for him
to be content with coldly intellectual satisfaction. The very
grading of our experiences in such a way as to place deep sleep
above the dreaming consciousness, and this again above the
waking consciousness, in itself indicates a disposition towards
mystic and abstract unity. The Indian mind is, like Newman’s,
subtle in analysis, but it is also simple in belief, capable of a
concentration of the whole being upon an ideal of unity with
a degree of intensity which is rarely equalled elsewhere, and
which is of itself sufficient to carry the human spirit across the
border-line—if there be a border-line—between philosophy
and religion. As Prof. Das Gupta says, ‘The systems of philo¬
sophy in India were not stirred up merely by the speculative
demands of the human mind, but by a deep craving after the
realization of the religious purpose of life .’ 1 And the more
intense statement of Deussen is also justified* ‘No people on
earth took religion so seriously, none toiled on the way to salva¬
tion as they did. Their reward for this was to have got, if not
the most scientific, yet the most inward and immediate expres¬
sion of the deepest secret of being.’ 3 j

The Hindu regarded one-pointedness (ekagrata) as the indis¬
pensable condition of intellectual penetration into the deep
mysteries of the universe; and, although this qualification may
be difficult for outsiders to appreciate, and the application of it
may lead to certain extravagances and peculiarities, it undoubt¬
edly illustrates the facility with which the philosophy of India
connects itself inextricably with religion. Its use is allied with
an inclination and aptitude for a quiet and contemplative life,
and with a preference for the intuitive to the discursive in
1 Das Gupta, I. 71. * Deussen, S. V., 49.

4 AFFILIATIONS AND IMPORTANCE

method and for intensity to extensity in the resulting knowledge.
It favours passivity more than activity, and indicates a belief in
the service to thought which may be rendered by the quiet in
land ^

We may say that, under the conditions described, the pre¬
vailing tendency of thought is in the direction of a pantheism
of an idealistic character. India has been described as ‘radically
pantheistic and that from its cradle onwards’; and its pantheism
has been more continuous than in any other country. This
means a readiness to find close at hand the materials for both
philosophical speculation andreligious devotion,andstrengthens
the alliance between the satisfactions of the mind and of the
spirit. Every bush may be afire with God and every natural
event a manifestation of His indwelling, and, subjectively,
religious devotion and speculative insight are through pan¬
theism brought very close together.

Further, the alliance between philosophy and religion is also
favoured by the contemplative passivity which we have noted
as a characteristic of the Indian attitude. From this arises a
certain conservativeness, and a readiness to look to the. past
rather than to the future, expressing itself often in a belief in
a golden age set far back in a period of remote antiquity. This
again connects itself with a reverence for the authority of
tradition and an intense appreciation of the value of even the
smallest details of the sacred lore. This reverence attaches
itself frequently to ritualistic formulae. Take, e.g., the impor¬
tance assigned to the syllable Om (or Aim). We have here not
a meaningless catchword or charm, but a symbol indicative of
a whole philosophical position. It is analysed and re-analysed
to the fullest possible extent, and everything of possible value
is extracted from it. It is used.alike as a guide to concentration
and as the herald of a prophetic vision of the highest truth.
Similarly, but in a broader way, the reverence for tradition,
religiously valued, is seen in the constant endeavour to relate
philosophical conclusions to the pronouncements of the earliest
literature; and the consequence of this is to linkup speculation
with that period in the world’s history when religion and
philosophy had hardly begun to differentiate themselves from
each other.

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 5

Thus there are many reasons which would lead us to look for
both a religious origin and a religious design for philosophy in
India; and when we turn more particularly to the philosophy
of the Vedanta we find that our expectations are fully justified.

The very term Vedanta is an illustration of the tendencies
we have just been indicating. There are many possible mean¬
ings, as we shall see, but even if we take account of only the
primary and almost mechanically literal meaning—‘the end of
the Veda’—there is here suggested a desire to connect the
speculative ideas with the body of religious literature which has
the greatest claim to antiquity, and therefore the greatest
authority. But this also involves the linking up of the ideas with
the popular religion which the literature enshrines. The etymo¬
logy itself indicates that at the end of the process of satisfying
the requirements of ritual, at the end of the explanation of the
significance of the ceremonies, then might come the deeper
speculations. Thus, from the first, speculation could be secured
against the charge of being merely academic, and the founda¬
tions at least were laid for the Indian conception of the closest
possible union between religion and philosophy. In a com¬
parison between Hinduism and Buddhism Dr. J. Estlin Car¬
penter says with truth: ‘The forces of Hinduism were rooted in
a remoter past, they were intertwined more closely (than those
of Buddhism) even with the localities as well as with the habits
of the popular religion, they sprang more directly out of the
common heart, they appealed more directly to the common
mind. 51 This generalization may be applied to later develop¬
ments as well as to earliest origins.

In the Mahabhdrata, XII. 55, the term ‘Vedanta’ is taken to
denote the Upanishads, and this may be regarded as its primary
reference. It expresses the essential ideas of the Upanishads,
and, through the Aranyakas and the Brahmanas, reaches back
to the very oldest extant religious literature of India, viz. the
Vedas. For the Upanishads were the concluding part of the
Aranyakas, and contained the essential doctrines in which the
theosophical interpretations contained in the latter might be
regarded as finding their culmination. The Aranyakas, again,
were the hand-books—to speak metaphorically—and contained
1 Carpenter, 117.

6 VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

the most useful parts, or the most valuable interpretations, of
the Brahmanas. They were ‘Brahmanas appointed for the vow
of an anchorite’, and through them the Vanaprastha, or
‘dweller in the woods , might be assisted in pieparation foi his
hermit life. Their background was formed by the Brahmanas,
which were ritual text-books belonging to a later and less
original age than that of the Vedas, embodying sacerdotal
tradition, and elaborating the ideas of the Vedas into a complex,
cumbrous, and ever-growing ceremonial. Finally, passing still
farther up the stream of time, we come to the Vedas, comprising
in the Rigveda the ancient and beautiful hymns to the gods
which are amongst the most cherished possessions of Indian
literature, and showing affinities with that body of ideas which
is common to Indo-European thought in general and perhaps
to primitive thought throughout the world. Yet, while we use
the word ‘primitive’, we must be careful in connexion with the
Rigveda not to allow it to convey any hint of disparagement, for
these hymns present to us exceedingly wonderful intuitions of
the Divine, all the more impressive because they are so near to
the beginnings of the religious thought of the world.

The Vedas comprise also the Samaveda, a book of chants to
be sung by the priests at the time of the Soma worship; and the
Yajurveda, which contains formulae, partly in prose and partly
in verse, designed for use at the various sacrifices. To these
must also be added the Atharvaveda, later and less important
than the other Vedas and considerably different from them in
thought and feeling, inasmuch as, it shows traces of magical and
superstitious ideas which had crept in from a lower stratum of
thought, and were perhaps both cause and effect of a growingly
pessimistic mood.

Thus by an unbroken chain the Upanishads are connected in
a backward direction with the Vedas; but as the truth contained
in the Vedas is considered to be inexhaustible, we must also
look forwards, and regard as a continuation of the chain every
effort towards putting this truth in a more serviceable form
or towards giving a fuller interpretation of it. Therefore the
Vedanta will comprise not only the Upanishads and their prede¬
cessors, but also their successors. The Upanishads are later
summarized in the Vedanta Sutras, a collection of aphorisms in

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 7

which the salient points of the Upanishads are emphasized.
They are of the nature of succinct summaries for memorizing,
serving the purpose of notes for discussions continued from
century to century in the different schools. While these sum¬
maries might have been intelligible to those who had taken part
in, or were familiar with, the discussions based upon them, they
could not but be somewhat obscure to others not so privileged.
Thus they were practically useless without the commentaries
which followed at a later date. In one sense, therefore, the
culmination of the Vedanta is to be found in commentaries such
as those of Sankara, who flourished about the ninth century,
and Ramanuja of the twelfth century, and many others, whose
activities, of very varying degrees of importance, extended as
far down as the seventeenth century.

To this whole development the name Vedanta is, as a rule,
given, but variations in the application of the term should not
be left unnoticed. As we have seen 1 the primary application
of the term is to the Upanishads, but in the view of Prof. S. N.
Das Gupta, the Sutras 'form the original authoritative work of
the Vedanta’? To these and the Upanishads, the Gita is added
as a third authoritative source-book of the Vedanta philosophy.
Further, when the age of the commentators arrives, there is
a natural tendency to claim exclusive importance for one or
other of them. Usually Sankara obtains the pre-eminence.
Mr. P. N. Sen, e.g., says: 'The philosophy of Sankara has now
been unalterably identified with the Vedanta philosophy; it is
the Vedanta par excellence" 3 Ramanuja, of course, has also his
votaries, though not perhaps to the same extent. The question
of the importance of the various periods and contributors
relatively to each other will come up for later discussion. Tn
the meantime it is sufficient to notice that the name is not im¬
properly applied to the whole course of the development. On
the whole it would seem that the most common average usage
throughout India is to allow this wider reference to the whole
development, but at the same time to assign to the philosophy
of Sankara the central place in the field of the Vedantic
consciousness, and this will be, for the most part, the practice
followed in this book.

1 Supra , p. 5. 2 Das Gupta, I.

3 Philosophy of the Vedanta, 6.

8 YEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

We have found that the literal meaning of Vedanta is ‘end of
the Veda’, but allied meanings are ‘dogma of the Veda’, ‘final
aim of the Veda 5 , &c. It does not seem necessary to decide
between the claims of these various meanings, because the later
may be seen to arise out of the primary by an entirely natural
development of thought. The primary meaning would direct
attention especially to the Upanishads, the philosophical specu¬
lations which come at the end of the ritual formulae and direc¬
tions found in the Brahmanas, or, more exactly, as a subsequent
stage of the concentrated form in which these formulae appear
in the Aranyakas. But these speculations, when the thought of
their temporal sequence is transcended, might very well be
taken as the essence of essence, the central doctrine, to express
which—or to call forth the expression of which—was the aim or
final purpose of the Veda. In the case of the individual pupil,
also, what he learnt at the end of his course, what the Guru
might communicate to him with a considerable air of secrecy
and impressiveness in those days immediately preceding separa¬
tion which have special significance for all masters and pupils,
would naturally seem to be the most valuable of all the instruc¬
tions given during the years of training and that for which the
whole process had simply been an anticipation. To have intro¬
duced at an earlier stage distinctions of value between the
various parts of the total body of instruction, distinctions, in
other w T ords, selective of certain truths as worthy of being
raised to the rank of central dogmas, or even to have made the
idea of such distinctions explicit at all, might not have been
judicious, inasmuch as it might have led to a neglect on the part
of the pupil of the necessary preparatory stages. But there is
not the same difficulty if it is supposed that the distinction
might have emerged according to the unconscious logic of
events by which a situation only gradually yields up its full
significance. And the historical process is not altogether
different from the process as it goes on in the mind of an indi¬
vidual pupil. People in general are at first interested only in the
succession of events and take them as they come; it is only later
that their significance emerges and is realized. Thus whatever
stands at the end of any process comes gradually to be regarded
as containing the essential meaning of the process and as consti-

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 9

tuting the aim at which the whole process is directed. If,
further, at any special period in the development this essential
meaning is strikingly, even if unsystematically, set forth, the
resulting situation will be that, during subsequent periods, the
further interpretation of the central meaning will be the pre¬
dominant concern of thinkers. Thus, by considering the matter
along these lines, we can easily understand that the term Ved anta
will cease to invite attention most of all to its temporal aspect
and will come to indicate rather a purposeful and sustained
endeavour to penetrate to the very depths of the mysteries
alluded to in the earliest sacred books and to set forth the results
of investigation in doctrinal statements possessing ever-increas¬
ing clearness, consistency, and comprehensiveness.

In the Vedanta, as well as in other Indian philosophies, we
may notice a remarkable unity of development more closely
knit than in Western philosophy. In connexion with the latter
a conspicuous philosopher generally adopts the plan of enuncia¬
ting a fairly complete system of thought. This may to a certain
extent be elaborated by his immediate successors, but before
very long the system as a whole is superseded by another system
which may, indeed, grow out of its predecessor, but regards it
rather as affording material for criticism than as possessing con¬
tinuing authority. For the Western philosopher it is true that
our little systems have their day and cease to be. On account
of the fundamental similarities of human nature there will, of
course, be repetitions of the old in the new, but such repetitions
are not deliberate and in any case tend to be discouraged. In
India the case is very different. Throughout the centuries a
school of philosophy continues to be dominated by certain
leading ideas, and free development, though it is not absent, is
of comparatively subordinate importance. The Sutra form of
literature lent itself especially to this kind of combination of old
and new according to which the old unmistakably controlled,
although it did not entirely exclude, the new. As has been
already indicated, the Sutras were summaries for memory or
notes for discussion, fully intelligible only to those who had
taken part in the discussion. Inasmuch as they were only notes, a
certain amount of freedom of treatment and therefore variation
was possible, but the main lines of thought were dominatingly

10

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

fixed by the Sutras and by the more authoritative of the ancient
teachers. 1 The newer teachers would not feel at liberty to
depart from the Sutras or to contradict the older teachers in
regard to any important issue. Reinterpretation alone was pos¬
sible, with the limited object of adjusting the traditional doc¬
trines to opposing tendencies which had emerged at later dates
or of introducing topics on which the earlier teachers had kept
silence. It was of fundamental importance that authority
should be maintained and tradition respected, and thus the
philosophical task consisted to a large extent in the repetition
and elaboration of earlier views.

Thus the unity of Eastern philosophy as compared with
Western might be illustrated by the poetical unity of alliteration
as contrasted with the less obvious but more organic unity of
blank verse. Or, perhaps, in temporary disregard of the fact
that it is maintained through centuries, the Indian unity might
be compared to that of a single individual as he grows from
infancy to manhood, in contrast with the unity of successive
generations of men within a single system of national or racial
development. Prof. S. N. Das Gupta points out with justice
that ‘it is not possible to write any history of successive z philo¬
sophies of India, but it is necessary that each system should be
studied and interpreted in all the growth it has acquired through
the successive ages of history from its conflicts with the rival
systems. . . / Earlier in the same paragraph, and perhaps with
special reference to the Vedanta, he says: ‘A system in the
Sutras is weak and helpless as a new-born babe, but if we take
it along with its developments down to the beginning of^the
seventeenth century, it appears as a fully developed man, strong
and harmonious in all its limbs. ? 3

It may easily, we think, be maintained that the Vedanta is
the most important and most widely influential amongst Indian
philosophies. Its 'boldness, depth, and subtlety of speculation,’ 4
have attracted the attention of students everywhere, and it is
fundamental in the thought of the simpler people. Other sys¬
tems have arisen in opposition to it, have had temporary success,

1 We may compare this with certain conditions which obtain in Indian
music. The rag, which is a fixed form, dominates the structure of any new
composition, but, nevertheless, allows considerable freedom for variation.

3 Italics mine. 3 Das Gupta, I. 64. 4 S.B.E* XXXIV, p. xiv.

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA \ ; n

and have left their mark upon the body of Vedantic
itself. But from the earliest dawn of antiquity to the presfesi^
day the Vedanta has more than held its own. Max Muller
claims that it is ‘clearly the native philosophy of India’. 1 It may
be claimed to be the first growth of philosophic thought upon
the soil of India. Even in the Upanishads traces of other philo¬
sophies are few and far between, and in still earlier literature
such indications are practically non-existent, whereas ‘strictly
Vedantic concepts meet us at every step in the Hymns, the
Brahmanas, the Aranyakas.’ 2 More than sixty years ago
Nehemiah Goreh couid speak of other philosophies as having
no adherents whilst the Vedanta was ‘held by a large majority
of Hindus’. 3 What was true then is still true to-day, provided
that we look for signs of its prevalence not only in articulate
philosophical expression, but in the more subtle thought and
practice-forms which hold an often unacknowledged sway over
the community.

Having referred briefly to the affiliations and importance of
the Vedanta philosophy, we may now turn our attention to a
fuller consideration of the emergence of the fundamental ideas
in the earliest religious literature. The remainder of this chapter
will be taken up mainly with the ideas in the Vedas which seem
to be anticipatory of Vedantic doctrine.

The Vedas are regarded in India as of fundamental religious
importance. According to one Indian writer, a man is an
atheist if he disbelieves in the Vedas, but not necessarily so if he
disbelieves in God. The dates of the books are variously stated.
By strictly orthodox Brahmans they are regarded as eternal, but
the word eternal may be modified so as to signify ‘age-long’, and
the date of origin retracted only so far as the beginning of the
present mundane age, i.e. to over one hundred billion years
ago. 4 Even when only calculable periods are considered, there is
great diversity of opinion. Tilak and Jacobi favour a very early
date, not later than 3500 B.c., basing their conclusions both on
astronomical data and on the normally observed slowness of
development in India. Other scholars—Max Muller in a former
generation and Professors Berriedale Keith and Hopkins at

* Mttller, S.S. 115. > lb. 115. 3 Goreh, 217.

4 Cf. Griswold, 67; Das Gupta, 10.

12

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

the present day—favour dates between 1200 and 800 B.c. It
cannot be said that there are sufficient data to enable us to
reach a definite conclusion, and the matter can hardly be settled
without further archaeological investigation and discovery. In
any case we are concerned here not with minute details possibly
affected by conclusions as to dates, but with certain broad
tendencies which prepare the way for the leading conceptions
of the Vedanta. We shall confine our attention chiefly to the
Rigveda.

The religion of the Veda is for the most part one of light and
joyousness, an expression of the trustfulness succeeding to the
unreasoning terror of evil spirits which is a frequent accom¬
paniment of animistic religion. The terrors of the darkness
have been forgotten as by a child awakening to the light of the
morning and to the presence of protecting friends. The be¬
nignant forces of nature are relied upon to triumph over the
destructive; and, if occasionally malignant demons should
appear, there are assuredly forces in nature of sufficient potency
to overcome them and ready to assist those who are careful to
worship in the appointed way. The attitude in general is one
of simple trustfulness and rather easily satisfied materialism.
‘Lead thou us, O Agni, to increasing riches. 51 £ 0 Usas,
waken up for me the sounds of joy, send us the riches of the
great/ 2 are amongst the characteristic prayers. The ethical
sense cannot be said to be very fully developed. What is upper¬
most in the mind of the worshipper is omission or error in
sacrificial ceremony rather than a consciousness of sin. In the
hymns addressed to Varuna, indeed, there is much searching
of heart and frequent confession of sin, but this deity hardly
maintained a place of supremacy in the Vedic pantheon, and in
any case the sins confessed are ceremonial rather than moral,
sins of ignorance rather than sins of wilfulness, social rather than
personal. 3 ‘In whatever way we have sinned against the gods,
in whatever manner we have through ignorance neglected thy
work, Oh, do not destroy us for these sins 5 and again, ‘O Varuna,
deliver us from the sins of our fathers. 5

The gods who are worshipped belong to the three regions of
the heavens, the air, and the earth. In Dyaus, the earliest of the
Rigveda, I. 13. 3 Ib.48.1. 3 Cf. ib. VII. 89. 5.

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 13

gods, there is indicated a slight personification of the sky, and
this is carried farther in relation to the other gods of the same
region, e.g. Varuna, the source of steadfastness, all-seeing,
following the flight of ‘the birds that fly through the heaven’,
‘sovran of the sea, and knowing the ships that are thereon To
Usas, the radiant goddess of the dawn, as she awakens the joy
of the morning and puts to flight the terrors of darkness, many
hymns of great beauty are addressed. Visnu also appears in this
group of gods, but holds a comparatively subordinate place
amongst the Vedic gods generally. Amongst the gods of the
atmosphere, or middle region, Indra, almost entirely beneficent
in his activities although later to become the god of war, and
Rudra, the terrible one, the god of the thunderbolt, are the
most important, and they are surrounded by a crowd of minor
deities, such as the Maruts, or storm-gods, Vata, the god of the
wind, and Parjanya, the god of the rain-cloud.

The chief deities of the earth are Agni, Soma, and Yama.
Agni is the god of the sacrificial fire, and is described as the
youngest of the gods, because he is born anew whenever the
sacrificial fire is lit. He is perhaps not strictly an earth-god, as
he has also easily intelligible affinities with the air and the sky
and with their typical deities, Indra and Surya. The magical
and medicinal qualities of the soma plant supply the character¬
istics of the god of this name. Personification is perhaps carried
farthest of all in connexion with Yama, the god of death. Only
later does he become an altogether sombre deity. In the Rigveda
he is the pioneer of the path to the world beyond; and, although
the approach to him is made difficult by reason of many perils,
and he himself appears at times to be jealous of human aspira¬
tions after immortality, he is, on the whole, a kindly dispenser
of bliss in the realms of the departed.

But what is of most importance for our present purpose is the
evidence we may gather from the Veda of that growing con¬
ception of unity, joined perhaps with a tendency in a negative
direction, which we may take as a definite anticipation of the
subsequent general trend of Indian thought. In this connexion
we may recall the differences already noted between Greek and
Indian thought—the contentment of the latter with vagueness
as contrasted with the definite personifications of the former.

i 4 VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

The gods of the Veda had the indefiniteness of the natural
forces with which they were associated, rather than clearly dis¬
tinguishable characters. Thus their functions are easily inter¬
changeable, and it becomes possible that the individual gods,
instead of distributively representing each a particular quality,
may represent groups of qualities several of which they possess
in common. Then, by an unconscious process of generalization,
the view will be entertained that the gods, seeing that they
possess common qualities, are one in essence. Attention will
gradually be directed beyond the particularity of the gods
towards this essence and especially towards that god who is
supposed to embody it most completely. One god will thus
become supreme in the consciousness of the worshipper, not
with the permanent primacy of a definite hierarchy, nor even
with the temporary priority which is indicated by the term
henotheism. We hesitate to accept unreservedly this favourite
term of Max Muller, because it seems to suggest too definitely
a comparison of the god selected with other gods who are
deliberately disregarded, whereas the true state of the matter
seems to be that the nature-form which occupies strikingly the
centre of consciousness also occupies more or less vaguely the
whole field of consciousness, and the other gods are not simply
assigned to a lower rank but left out of account altogether.

But what we wish to emphasize is the earnestness and at the
same time the vagueness of the religious search after unity.
Dissatisfaction with sheer particularity is manifested in various
ways. As already indicated, the gods are grouped into three
roughly defined classes, and certain of them, such as Agn>, are
regarded as having affinity with all three classes. Further, the
physical immensity of the deities worshipped, as, e.g^, the sky
and the air, will tend to strengthen the feeling of all-pervading-
ness and universality . Conceptions , such as that of the All-gods ,
the gods taken collectively, the 'fellowship of gods V 'the
heavenly folk ’, 3 will be laid hold of to break down the barriers
of particularity. Also, general creative activity may be personi¬
fied, as in connexion with Prajapati, and another creative deity
called Visvakarman. In association with the latter there is
developed an interesting distinction between efficient and
1 Cf. Rigveda, VII, 35. 11. a lb. X. 57. 5.

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 15

material cause, and men are found to be beginning to concern
themselves with the original material (corresponding roughly
to the Greek ‘hyle’) out of which the ‘sole God ’ has fashioned
the earth and the heaven, or with the more poetical form of the
question, ‘Whereon he stood when he established all things.’ 1

Perhaps in studying the idea of sacrifice we may reach a fuller
appreciation of the Vedic conception of the underlying unity of
all things. We have to attempt to replace ourselves in that
mental attitude which was, e.g., at the back of the mystery
religions in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian
era, when the distinction which we modems make between
inner and outer, between symbol and fact, was less definite, and
when, sensed in a mystical mood, ‘the things of earth are in
sympathy with the things of heaven.’ * The sacrifice has to be
viewed in its entirety, as an intricate ritualistic system of
devices, every detail of which has to be followed with the most
scrupulous attention, but which, when properly manipulated,
affords the worshipper the opportunity of increasing the hidden
forces of the world—what Oldenberg calls the ‘zauberfluidum’
and of ‘tapping’ them for his own advantage or that of his
society. The sacrifice is—to adopt a Vedic metaphor—‘the
thread spun out to reach the gods’, ‘drawn out with threads on
every side, the man extends it, and the man unbinds it; even to
the vault of heaven hath he outspun it’. 3 What the worshipper
gives to the priest may be conceived as having or acquiring
independent value and as added to the fundamental reality of
the world. We are not even to regard it as offered to the gods
to propitiate them. It is rather a latent power which is older
and deeper in the heart of things than the gods themselves, and
the latter are invoked only that the sum of conditions may be
completed which is necessary for the efficacy of the sacrifice.
If all the rules are meticulously followed, the results of the
sacrifice will emerge by necessary law, and in this conception
of inescapable consequences we may perhaps find the germ of
that idea of Rita* or order of the universe, which again becomes

1 lb. 81. 4.

. * Cumont, Mysticisme Astral, 242, quoted in Angus, The Mystery Re¬
ligions and Christianity . 3 j Rigveda,yL. 130, 1.

4 Prof. Keith holds that rita originally meant the physical order of the
universe. Cf. his Religion and Philosophy of the Veda, 85.

x6 VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

the foundation of the doctrine of Karma, so important in subse¬
quent Indian philosophy. The conception of an underlying
mysterious force or essence is also deepened metaphysically,
and may not unjustifiably be taken as reappearing in the belief
in the purusha , the mighty giant who submits to the dismember¬
ment of himself for the sake of the production of the world.
Here the sacrifice has become not merely a means of access to
the constitutive principle of the universe, but itself that prin¬
ciple. Through the operation of a sacrificial act the world is
evolved, and therefore sacrifice is fundamental.

We may gain some light also upon the subjectivity and
idealism which are characteristic of later Indian thought if we
turn back again from the ritual of the sacrifice to the attitude
of the worshipper towards it. We must avoid mechanizing the
ritual to such an extent as to detach it altogether from the sub¬
jective devotion which seeks to find expression in it, or from
the fundamental sense of being in the presence of that mysterium
tremendum of which Prof. Otto speaks. If we seek to understand
the aspiration of the worshipper, we may conceive it as having
at first almost a physical basis, showing itself in that agitated
outbreathing which is the accompaniment of great emotion and
which some modern psychologists have so closely identified
with the actual emotion. The breath may be quite simply con¬
sidered as dispersing and losing itself in the wider atmosphere
of the external environment; and, if we can take the further step
of imagining the breath as becoming articulate in prayer and
can at the same time keep in mind the extremely faint line of
demarcation in early thought between the physical and, the
psychical or spiritual, we shall find ourselves almost in a
position to grasp the idea of the transition by which prayer
comes to be regarded as having efficacy in the objective world
and as being itself a phase of the fundamental reality of that
world. Are we not here also almost within sight of the original
underlying conception which may serve to unite the various
meanings assigned to the word Btuhtncii The breath of aspira¬
tion which becomes vocal in the spells and incantations of the
priests and the chants of the singers and finds symbolic expres¬
sion in some of the material of the ritual, such as the smoke of
the sacrificial fire, is discovered also to be not alien to the spirit

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 17

of man, but of the same substance and character with that
spirit. We may see here further the earliest conditions of the
emergence of the idea of the Atman , in its meaning of the Vital
breath’ of man, which has at the same time the closest connexion
with the innermost essence of the objective external world. 1
We do not think it unreasonable to suggest that such fused
and confused-Xonceptions as these may be the earliest sources
fronTwhich some of the fundamental ideas of Indian philo¬
sophy have emerged and in course of time become gradually
crystallized.

In more immediate connexion with our present subject we
must take account also of what might be described as a process
of internalizing the sacrifice. The conception of tapas appears
occasionally in the Rigveda. Later on it attracted to itself the
idea of mortification or penance, but here it has little more
significance than ‘fervour* or ‘heat’, suggesting the sacrifice of
devotion which goes on internally and at the same time its kin¬
ship with that power of heat by which the Primal Being genera¬
ted the objective world. However slightly spiritual the con¬
ception may be, it at least serves to turn the attention inwards
as well as outwards and to hint at a dawning consciousness that
the soul of man may be as important an element in ultimate
reality as the underlying forces of the external world. We are
encouraged at least to an interpretative use of this psycho¬
physical conception, and prepared, in however slight a degree,
for the idea that at the root of existence there is something more
than the merely material and that the ultimate essence of the
universe may have a spiritual aspect. In view of all this it will
seem in no way strange that in the Rigveda we should come
across such a flight of metaphysical speculation as is to be found
in Book X, 129. 4:

Within it at first arose Desire,

Which was the primal seed of mind;

The root of Being in non-Being Sages
Searching by wisdom in the heart discovered?

We may also trace the beginnings of a conception of the
intrinsic value of knowledge, arising probably out of the idea
that the knowledge of the ritual of the sacrifice is of supreme

1 Cf. Das Gupta, 26. 3 Prof. P. D. Shastri’s translation.

. . c

IS VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

importance as giving access to and control over the mysterious
essence of reality. We are here on the lines of an advance to the
fuller idea that knowledge itself may constitute reality; and,
when the content of the effective knowledge is also taken account
of, there emerges the notion of a law or principle hidden
beneath the immediate appearances of things. Beneath Being
there is something which is not-Being in the ordinary sense of
the word, inasmuch as it is not the product of merely ordinary
experience. Here there is at least the beginning of a negative
procedure of thought. We describe the fundamental reality in
negative terms so long as we are looking at it from the empirical
point of view, and beside this negation there is the still more
significant consciousness that, though we call the ultimate reality
non-Being, yet just because it is fundamental, it is also Being
in a far more satisfying sense than the ordinary Being of which
we are aware in our usual experience. This tendency towards
negation as well as towards unity in Vedic thought deserves
further consideration by reason of its later importance. Prof.
B. K. Shastri points out with emphasis that the fundamental
contrast between the Vedic and the Upanishadic attitude to life
was that, whereas the former was positive and held to the idea
that life was to be lived, the latter was negative and had arrived
at the consciousness that 'life must pass through a phase of no
life to reach fuller life’. 1 Whence has come this change from
the earlier joyous positive of Vedic times? Perhaps one reason
may lie just in the subjective effect of this growing sense of
unity amongst the gods to which we have referred. As the gods
worshipped became fewer in number and at the same rtime
more overwhelming by the immensity and extent of their power,
the worshippers would inevitably feel farther separated from
their deities. Correspondingly, as the world became more
rationalized, it would seem to the simpler minds to be emptier
of friendly intimate powers, and therefore less desirable—
something to be negated. Further, in the attitude to sacrifice
which we have attempted to describe, a hint of negative tendency
may be discovered. With the associated magic and incantation
there is closely connected the idea of ecstasy, of being caught up
into a mystical excitement, and of being, therefore, detached

1 B. K. Shastri, p. xii.

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA 19

from the ordinary world. In order to participate, through the
sacrifice or other ritual, in the fundamental reality, sometimes
conceived of as a semi-magical, almost physical, fluid, the wor¬
shipper is led to depress his faculties as a whole or sacrifice the
higher to the lower. The ascetic and orgiastic worshipper is the
best magician, if hot the best mystic. But if we depress our
higher faculties, it is exceedingly natural to go farther and learn
to depreciate or negate our experience as a whole. And to this
may be added, on the one hand, that growing consciousness of
the complexity and distressfulness of human life with which the
dawning—only the faintest dawning, we admit—of the idea of
transmigration may have had something to do; and, on the other
hand, that disappointment of childlike trust in the first appear¬
ances of things which is the inevitable accompaniment of the
natural development of the human mind. It does not take long
anywhere for men to learn that the mystery of reality lies deeper
than the grasp of our senses. An unmistakably vivid conscious¬
ness of negation is close at hand, whenever reflection emerges,
and the speculations to which we have already referred in con¬
nexion with the Rigveda , X. 129, are but the metaphysical aspect
of a more popular and universal tendency.

There seem, therefore, to be in the Rigveda evidences of
a tendency towards unity and of an inclination towards nega¬
tion, sufficient to justify us in finding in the earliest sacred books
at least the germs of what were afterwards to be the funda¬
mental ideas of the Vedanta philosophy. It is not necessary to
consider the other Vedas to any great extent. The Samaveda
and the Yajurveda are for the most part derivative from the
Rigveda. The Atharvaveda belongs to a lower level of thought
and is rather outside of the main stream of development,
although it is not without influence even upon the Upanishads. 1
Its authors, for the most part, inhabit a world of magic and
incantation. The great gods have gone from it, and the smaller
gods have arrived in the guise of a horde of capricious spirits
who require to be placated by the constant performance of
intricate rites, which rites themselves are found gradually to
be acquiring value as independent forces of the hidden world.

1 Gf. Prof. Ranade, Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 1 .4 and Das Licht vom
Osten, 4.

20

VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE VEDA

Sin has dropped from the moral to the physical or magical
level. It may attach to a man without his consent after the
manner of a contagious disease, and the remedy for it is de¬
graded to the same level and consists mainly of magical devices.
As Bloomfield says: ‘The notion of expiation extends also to
circumstances inherent or accidental, which cannot and do not
involve personal responsibility. Expiation assumes the charac¬
ter of cure or correction of inauspicious conditions and
accidents.’ 1

It is interesting to observe that in the description of the
vratya , or wanderer, found in the fifteenth book of the Atharva¬
veda, Prof. Hauer sees a foreshadowing of the negative attitude
and magical claims of the later Yogi, and these may be placed
over against a certain philosophical background, however vague
and shadowy this may be. The Vratya, who ‘seems to be a kind
of Brahmacarin, or, at any rate, one who has entered the Brah-
manical community after having been converted from an Aryan
but non-Brahmanical tribe’, a manifests a desire to enter into
unity with the original ground of things through ascetic ecstasy
and a negation of ordinary experience ; and at the same time the
claim is made that through magical practices supernatural
power may be obtained, and the influence of the soul of the
worshipper be extended to the confines of the world. 3 We find
also a more elevated, but still very dim, conception of Brahma
as the prayer of the worshipped and at the same time the
supreme principle of the world d It will therefore not be out
of place to suggest that in the Atharvaveda, as well as in the
Rigveda, there are indications of that consciousness of funda¬
mental unity, combined with a negative attitude to ordinary
experience, which we have already noted in connexion with the
earlier book, and which was to become dominant in later
thought. To the further development of these ideas in the
Upanishads and succeeding literature we shall turn in the next
chapter.

1 Bloomfield, Atharva Veda, 84. Ib. 94.

3 Cf. Hauer, in Das Lichtvom Osten, 56. 4 Atharvaveda, V. 1.

II

ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS IN THE
UPANISHADS, THE VEDANTA SUTRAS, THE, GlTA,
AND GAUDAPlDA’S KARIKAS

I N this chapter we pass to a further stage in Indian thought,
at which the development of the fundamental Vedantic ideas
(especially those of a consciousness of ultimate unity and an
apparent necessity for negation in the search after it) becomes
much fuller and more impressive. It is difficult, if not impos¬
sible, to treat of the Upanishads in separation from the Sutras,
in which they were summarized—and some would say trans¬
formed—and also the Commentaries in which they were ampli¬
fied and interpreted. They have been described as the kernel
of the whole of Post-Vedic Indian philosophy, and it is prover¬
bially difficult to separate the kernel from the remainder of the
fruit. Further, the Upanishads have not self-subsistency in the
sense that they present us with a clear-cut and definite system
of thought which may stand separate examination. From the
philosophical point of view they contain^ anticipations rather
than completions of doctrine; they are inspirational rather than
dogmatic. Their aim, as Prof. Radhakrishnan says, is |‘not
so much to reach philosophic truth as to bring peace and free¬
dom to the anxious human spirit’. 1 They make no claim to
independence or definiteness or coherence, and therefore sur¬
render themselves easily and unresistingly to later summarizing
or expositional treatment. Yet we must not on this account
presume to undervalue their importance. They occupy a central
position in the history of Indian philosophy. Not only do they, as
we have seen, provide materials for future development, but they
link themselves closely with the past and gather up its wisdom.
They carry forward the tendencies and expound the implicit doc¬
trines discoverable in the Vedic Hymns, and by no means break
continuity altogether with the Brahmanas, although they adopt a
remarkably free attitude to the authority of the ancient scriptures
in general, and undeniably break fresh ground. They mark a tran¬
sition from ritualistic and physical to philosophical and psychical
1 Radhakrishnan, I. 138.

22 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

categories. As Prof. Das Gupta says: ‘The passage of the
Indian mind from the Brahmamc to the Upamshad thought is
probably the most remarkable event in the history of philosophic
thought.’ 1 On the whole it may be said that their significance
is more prospective than retrospective, and it is important for
our present purpose to note that, while they are not without
influence upon all phases of Indian philosophical thought, and
also supply intellectual inspiration to popular religion and to
sects both high and low, they have a closer relation to the
Vedanta than to any other school of thought. Indeed they are
frequently regarded as containing the essence of the Vedanta
although frequently, as we have seen, the term Vedanta has both
a narrower and a wider interpretation. And in connexion with
the r-laim of the later Commentaries to constitute the special
basis of the Vedanta, we may notice that the occupation of the
commentators would be largely gone, had not the Upamshads
supplied them with material for their discussions and a point
of departure for their speculations. It may be added also that
in the Upanishads themselves the name Vedanta is used as
indicative of the philosophy contained in them.*

The fundamental meaning of the name Upamshad seems to
be derived from the root sad, ‘to sit,’ and upa y ‘near, with the
prefix ni, having adverbial and intensive significance; the whole
combination thus yielding the idea of ‘sitting very near’ to the
teacher and listening intently and respectfully to him. From
this it is easy to pass to the idea of the doctrine conveyed by the
teacher; and when we take account also of the generally esoteric
tendency of the teaching and the exclusive character of the
audience, we arrive at the resultant meaning of ‘secret doc¬
trine’. Sankara, however, in his introduction to the. Taittiriya
Upamshad, gives an interpretation which has special significance
in relation to the character of his philosophy. He favours a
derivation from the root sad, ‘to destroy,’ although he does not
altogether abandon the idea of ‘nearness’ or ‘approach’. His
meaning apparently is that the doctrine would destroyignorance
and thus open the way of approach to God. In general, how¬
ever, the conception of ‘secret doctrine ’ would seem to corre¬
spond to the most common use of the term.

■ Das Gupta, 31. 1 Cf. Farquhar, 6o.

IN THE UPANISHADS 23

According to tradition, an enormous number of Upanishads
was at one time or other in existence. Weber suggests as many
as 250, but Prof. Radhakrishnan is content with the more
modest number of 108. For our purposes we may confine our
attention mainly to the eleven which were commented on by
Sankara. These were the Aitareya, Taittirlya, Chhandogya,
Brihadaranyaka, Kena, Kathaka, Isa, Mundaka, Svetasvatara,
Praina, and JMandukya. But in addition to these, account should
also be taken of the Kaushltaki, the Mahanarayana, and the
Maitrayana . The oldest and most authoritative Upanishads
are in prose, and are pre-Buddhistic and non-sectarian. The
earliest group, composed of the Aitareya, the Kaushltaki, the
Chhandogya, the Kena, the Taittirlya, and the Brihadaranyaka,
were probably in existence by 500 B.c. They are linked very
closely to the Brahmanas, but arrive definitely at a philosophical
point of view and are indeed more purely speculative than some
of the later treatises. Within this group Deussen is inclined to
assign temporal priority to the Brihadaranyaka and the Chhan¬
dogya, The second group consists of the Kathaka, the Isa, the
Svetasvatara, the Mundaka, and the Mahanarayana ; and the
period covered by them is from 50° B - c - to the middle of the
third century b.c. There are tendencies in a theistic direction,
and emphasis is laid upon the importance of Visnu and Siva.
Brahmans appear to have a supremacy to which they had not
attained at the period of the earlier works; and, in general, caste
distinctions are more rigidly drawn. Greater stress also is laid
upon the practice of Yoga, asceticism, and self-discipline. The
Svetpivatara, in particular, contains references to the emergence
of philosophical schools, and makes use of the technical terms
and characteristic doctrines of these schools. To the third
group may be assigned the Prasna, the Maitrayana, and the
Mandukya. The Maitrayana seems to be contemporary with
the earlier form of the Gita, and may be placed in the second
century a.d. It contains references to the Sankhya and Yoga
philosophies, and its tone is profoundly pessimistic. The
Prasna is slightly earlier and the Mandukya slightly later than
the Maitrayana . 1

1 Prof. Ranade has recently investigated the problem of Upanishad
chronology and places the whole of the Upanishad development between

24 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

As we consider the transition from the Vedas to the Upani¬
shads, we may refer again to the tendency referred to in the last
chapter which indicates a background of growingly sombre
character. A full sense of the gravity of the problems which
have to be dealt with has been developed, although it is only
with difficulty and very gradually that these problems come to
be treated from a purely philosophical point of view. The heart
is still not sufficiently at leisure from itself to permit of the
calmness and detachment necessary for pure speculation. De¬
liverance rather than salvation is the end aimed at, and the
remedy for the ills of life is sought in religion rather than in
philosophy.

The religion of the Vedas was predominantly joyous, but by
the time we reach the Upanishads, the sky has become over¬
shadowed. We have already indicated in the last chapter some
reasons for the change. We have seen that the tendency away
from polytheism in the direction of pantheistic unity may have
deepened the shadows which lay upon life. The kindly and
familiar deities had withdrawn themselves.from the world, and
their erstwhile worshippers felt lonely in the midst of the
physical immensities which had served to develop and strengthen
the sense of unity.

On the other cause to which we referred in passing, a little
more may be said. The transmigration theory was gradually
introduced into India during this period, probably, though not
certainly, from alien sources. At first the doctrine would seem
to satisfy the desire for persistence and would have a comforting
effect as a relief from the fear that death might be the final .end.
But, as the negative tendency grew stronger, and other causes
still to be mentioned contributed to this strengthening, and
consequently the ideas of escape and deliverance came more
and more to occupy the centre of consciousness, these ideas

1200 and 600 b.c. He divides the principal Upanishads into the following
five groups, with a rough, but by no means strict, chronological sequence:

I. Brihaddranyaka and Chhdndogya.

II. Jsd and Kena.

III. Aitareya, Taittiriya, and Kaushttaki,

IV. KdphakatMundaka^ndMdndiikya.

V. Prasna, Maitrayana, and Mandukya.

Of. ‘The Background of Upanishadic Philosophy", in the Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. I, p. 5.

IN THE UPANISHADS 25

would again find reinforcement in the thought of a succession
of lives. Continuance of existence under such conditions would
simply be an additional source of misery. Escape becomes a
more difficult and more hopeless problem when a practically
unending series of lives has to be reckoned with; and the
pessimism which has attached itself to the experiences of a
single life becomes infinitely increased.

Various other causes, not of course peculiar to India, may
have contributed to the darkening of the background. The
deadening effect of despotism, with its accompanying depres¬
sing contrasts between wealth and poverty, came to be obvious
causes at a later period, and there may have been anticipations
of such conditions even in the centuries under review. The
effect of the climate of the plains of India may also be noted.
As the number of centuries increased which separated the
Aryan settlers from the period of their immigration, the lassi¬
tude engendered by sub-tropical conditions may have dimin¬
ished their zest for life, may have induced a mood of passive
acquiescence rather than of struggle, and disposed them in
general to seek for deliverance rather than victory.

Throughout the Upanishads we find indications of this
sombre background, and indications of a perplexed, almost
pathetic, yearning after deliverance. In the Kathaka Upanishad 1
we are told that ‘the wise man ceases to grieve when he knows
the distinction of the Self from the senses’. Human experience
is found to be of a fleeting and unsatisfactory character, pre¬
dominantly painful. It is repeatedly suggested that the state we
are to flee from is one of misery, and the object of our striving
is to free ourselves from old age or death or grief. ‘There is no
bliss in anything finite.’ z

In drawing attention to this pessimistic background we are
not, of course, forgetful of the general consideration that it is
in a ‘divine discontent’ and a dissatisfaction with the actual that
all philosophy originates. If, however, the preliminary view of
the problems to be solved is excessively gloomy, this frequently
exercises a demoralizing influence upon the solutions arrived at.
Philosophy comes to be regarded as providing a means of
release rather than a system of constructive thought. Instead
1 II. 6. 7. a Cf, Chhandogya 27 . VII. 26. 1.

26 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

of being occupied with a patient investigation of the world
which has presented the problems, attention is diverted from
this world, and the rapidity with which a solution can be
arrived at becomes all-important. The mind is thus left with
insufficient freedom for pure and independent speculation, and,
under the urgent influence of religious motives and practical
needs, arguments are accepted which are admittedly not cogent
from an intellectual point of view. Under the influence of the
idea of escape, recourse may be had, e.g., to the doctrine of two
orders of knowledge, so related that instead of the lower order
gradually yielding up its problems and contradictions for solu¬
tion on the higher plane, a quick transition is permitted from
the one to the other, with consequences that are disastrous to
philosophical consistency. Dr. Hauer definitely finds in causes
of this sort one explanation of the negative character of Upani-
shad philosophy. He holds that, if the identification of the
human soul with the world-principle had been purely meta¬
physical, this would have led to an affirmatory spiritualizing
of the world. But this, however, has been expressed only
occasionally in the Upanishads, and for the most part the
religio-mystical attitude has led to that denial of the world
which was an anticipation or accompaniment of Buddhistic
negation. If the sense of need had not been so clamant and
urgent, the character of the solution would probably have been
different. 1

On the other hand, while it seems necessary to stress in some
degree the pessimistic character of the primary attitude, we
must not overlook an actual and vigorous speculative interest.
The Upanishads are dominated by a sense of a mystery which
is attractive as well as terrifying, and by an intense desire to
penetrate this mystery. Intellectual curiosity is a strong motive
alongside of the desire for deliverance. ‘Tell us what there is in
the great hereafter, 5 says Nachicetas in the Kathaka Upanishads
and one of the searchers after truth in the ChhandogyaUpanishad
is asked whether he has ‘sought for the instruction by which the
Unheard becomes heard, the Unintelligible intelligible, and the
Unknown known 5 . 3 In the same Upanishad one of the teachers

1 Cf. Hauer, in -Das Licht vom Osten, 91.

3 I. 1. 29.

3 VI, 3. 5.

IN THE UPANISHADS 27

is said to have shown his pupil ‘the back of the other side of
darkness’, 1 and the oft-repeated refrain of the Bnhadaranyaka
Upanishad, indicative of the spirit of the Upanishads as a whole,
is ‘Lead me from darkness into light, from the unreal to the
Real’.

The very name ‘Upanishad’, if we adopt the prevailing in¬
terpretation, indicates a tendency to speculative construction.
Further, the state from which deliverance is sought is described
in an intellectual manner, not merely as a state of misery but
as a state of error. The inquiries of which the results are set
forth are, moreover, undertaken at a period of life when the
active duties of the householder are supposed to be com¬
pleted, and the seeker after truth is no longer disturbed by
the cares of the world and is free to enter upon a period of
quiet contemplation and study of the ultimate mysteries. Also
it has to be remembered that, at the period of the great
Upanishads, there was, perhaps, greater freedom from the
bonds of traditional authority than at any other period in the
history of Indian thought. The authority of the Vedas was
still strong, but it was not so excessive as to necessitate a
purely scholastic procedure and an incessant repetition of tra¬
ditional ideas.

The Upanishads link themselves to previous thought through
their great interest in the mysteries and power of the sacrifice,
in the consideration of which we have found one of the earliest
hints of a sense of underlying unity. In the sacrifice the wor¬
shipper feels himself to be in contact with the hidden forces of
the .world, with the power which is even more fundamental
than the power of the gods. The Upanishads lay increased
emphasis upon the monistic suggestions which are here in¬
volved, but make a more definite and more sustained transition
from the external to the internal, and from the objective to the
subjective. They lay hold upon such suggestions as we find in
Rigveda, I. 164. 4, ‘Where was the vital breath, the blood, the
Self (Atman) of the world?’ They place full stress upon the
double implication, both physical and spiritual, contained in the
notions of Brahman and Atman, and upon the internalizing of
the sacrifice through the help of the conception of tapas. Indeed

I VII. 26. 2.

28 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

the possible identification of Brahman and Atman becomes
almost a central principle of investigation and the tendency in
the direction of a negation of anything that hinders this identifi¬
cation is discovered to be greatly strengthened. The two main
aspects of Upanishad thought may indeed be stated as (i) a
negative movement towards a denial of the particularity of the
world of our ordinary experience, and (2) a more positive move¬
ment towards the identification of the human spirit and the
divine, governed by the hope of reaching an absolute unity.
It is impossible, however, to separate these two movements,
save for the temporary purposes of exposition.

We have found the germ of a negative movement in the
Vedas, perhaps especially in the hardly more than physical idea
of a participation in a semi-magical fluid. When transferred to
the subjective side of the relationship, and plunged in a psychical
atmosphere of ecstasy, this same tendency reappears in the
depression of faculties usually regarded as higher, so that the
emotional aspiration which remains may obtain contact with
the physical hidden energy. But, as we have seen, the denial of
the higher activities, which is thus suggested and encouraged,
may very easily extend to a depreciation of our powers of
ordinary experience in general, and it is by no means easy to
eradicate this negative tendency when once it has manifested
itself.

We have already hinted at some of the probable causes of
the transition from the outer to the inner. We have noted the
growing importance even in the Vedas of a knowledge of the
sacrifice. It was thought to be exceedingly dangerous to make
any mistake in the performance of the elaborate ritual, and,
consequently, meticulously exact knowledge was regarded as
placing enormous power in the hands of those who had acquired
it. Emphasis was transferred from the action performed in the
sacrifice to knowledge of how to perform it. Further, there was
a tendency in the direction of identifying the knower with that
which he knew. The subjective consciousness of the priest
would thus be conceived of as having effective contact with the
mysterious power of the sacrifice with which he had to deal; and
the question would naturally arise as to whether the funda¬
mental power or essence of things might not be found in con-

IN THE UPANISHADS 29

sciousness just as well as in the objects with which it was so
intimately connected. 1

But when attention is thus directed internally to conscious¬
ness, it is important that this should be left as simple and un¬
trammelled as possible. If it is felt as a power, its effectiveness
must not be allowed to be unduly distributed. The immediate
data of the senses, with their resulting disturbing intrusions of
objects in space and time, must not be allowed to distract us.
If we are to reach the fontal unity, we must attempt to crush
together the details of the world, so that, coalescing, they may
fit into this unity. Differences of value must be disregarded, and
things of both higher and lower importance must be negated.
He who thinks is one, and therefore the victory must remain
with unity. 2

All change and all associated plurality must be regarded as
a matter of 'names and forms 5 . By the medieval nominalists
of Europe names were held to give fictitious reality to general
notions; but in the Upanishads it is to individual objects that
they give this fictitious support. We need not at this stage stop
to inquire into the degree of fictitiousness thus involved. It is
sufficient to say that naming is the other side of an individua¬
lizing tendency the effect of which is unreal if the individuals
thus constituted are taken as separate from the whole, but which
may have a certain amount of justification if the unity of the
whole is at the same time firmly grasped. The attainment of the
conception of the merely nominal character of particulars ought,
however, at least to have the result of diminishing our interest
in these particulars, decreasing our centrifugal desires, and thus
contributing to our peace of mind and subjective sense of unity.

It comes to this, that if we are to deny the world we must
have some metaphysical justification for so doing. The world
as a whole cannot properly be denied unless it is found to be
of an illusory character. As we shall see later, it is not easy
to decide how far the Upanishads themselves can be taken to
support a doctrine of illusoriness, but there are at least anticipa¬
tions of the conception of may a. In the Svetasvatara Upanishads
e.g., we read, 'The one God regulates nature and the Self. By
meditating on Him the world-illusion is completely removed. ,

* Cf. Hauer, op. tit >, 86, a Cf. Mdndukya U. II. 25. 3 I. 10.

3 o ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

Our deliverance is wrought through the destruction of our
ignorance, by rising from apara vidya (lower knowledge) to
para vidya (higher knowledge), and we can reach the best under¬
standing of the position if we formulate the conception that the
term avidya (ignorance) may be applied not only to the mistaken
mental attitude of the knower, but also to what is known. It
involves not only the negative idea usually associated with
ignorance, but also the more positive idea -of ‘false knowledge’;
in other words, it includes not only empirical ignorance but
empirical knowledge.

From this the transition is easy to regarding avidya as a cosmi-
cal principle. It becomes the source not only of our belief in an
ordinary world but of the ordinary world in which we believe.
The world of ordinary experience is explained by a principle
which suggests a negative way of dealing with this world, and,
consequently, a depreciatory valuation of it. And this cosmic
principle gains metaphysical importance by being more or less
vaguely related to God. The Svetasvatara Upanishad describes
it as ‘the own power of God concealed by its emanation’. 1 The
exact relation of this cosmic power to God and the metaphysical
standing of its products give rise to some of the most important
problems of later Yedantic philosophy. The central problem
is just whether the things of the ordinary world are altogether
to be deprived of reality, or whether only their particularity is to
be denied. But whatever conclusion may later be arrived at, we
may agree that there is in any case sufficient opportunity for
such denial or depreciation as will afford a discipline prepara¬
tory for the second phase of the Upanishad philosophical move¬
ment, viz. the identification of the Self of the individual and the
Self of the Universe; and to this we must now turn.

The principle of procedure is that in discovering the deepest
nature of our own selves, we shall also discover the fundamental
nature of the universe. ‘The light which shines above the
heaven, higher than all, higher than everything, beyond which
there are no other worlds, that is the same light which is within'
man.’ 2 All our difficulties, both theoretical and practical, come
from our failure to reach this identification, and the attainment
of it ought to be the object of all our searching. Here is the
i I, 5, 3 Chhandogya 17 , 111 . 15. 7.

IN THE UPANISHADS

secret of the universe, and here is the foundation of our peace.
‘He who knows Brahman is Brahman.' ‘That which is that
subtle essence (the root of all) in it all that exists has its self. It
is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.' 1

The fundamental formula is tat tvarh asi —‘That Thou art'—
a formula which expresses succinctly the equation of the indi¬
vidual self with the Universe, and of the Universe with the
Self in the highest sense, the result being a pure undifferenced
unity, or, at least, a unity in regard to which all differences are
on the point of being transcended. Another formula with much
the same meaning is aham Brahma asmi , ‘I am Brahman.'

Sometimes the formula has been mistakenly compared to
the Greek yvcoOi aeavrov, but we must carefully notice that
while the Greek formula may inculcate a thorough study of the
nature of the individual self, the Upanishad formula is con¬
cerned with the conception that the true self of each individual,
when thoroughly known, is discovered to be not at all indi¬
vidual. As soon as we reach the essence of the individual self,
the equation of it to the universal Self, and the identification of
Atman and Brahman, is found to be inevitable. The two terms
are recognized as reciprocal. Probably the interpretation of
their relation afterwards adopted by Sankara may be accepted
also as giving a true account of the Upanishad position.
‘Brahman’, he says, ‘denotes the term to be defined (viseshyam)
and Atman that which defines it (viseshanan), that by Brahman
the limitation implied in Atman is removed, and by Atman the
conception of Brahman as an (external) divinity to be wor¬
shipped is condemned.' 3 Dr. Hauer of Tubingen takes much
the same view. ‘Thus came about the mingling of the two ideas,
to the advantage of both. Brahman becomes wholly dissociated
from the realm of the magical, and the Atman attains infinity.' 3
We reach this identification by passing through various
stages, and we may first of all trace the process as it takes place
in the experience of the individual who is striving to reach the
inner essence of his soul. The exposition may be based on
Chhandogya Upanishad VIII. We are first asked to consider

1 Chhandogya U, VI. 8. 7. Cf, also VI. 9.4; VI. xo. 3, &c.
z Cf. Sankara’s Commentary on the Chhandogya U. y reproduced in
Deussen, P. U. 86.

3 Op, dt, y p. 91.

32 ANTICIPATIONS OF YEDANTIC IDEAS

the stage of ordinary waking life, and Prajapati, in conversation
with Indra, explains that the Self is The person who is seen in
the eye’, i.e. the ordinary bodily or material self (Vaisvanara)
dwelling in a cosmical environment to which the name Virat is
given. Indra, however, is not satisfied with this explanation,
and his attention is next turned to the dreaming state, in
which only the mind is active, in more or less complete inde¬
pendence of the body. To this corresponds the cosmical world-
power, Hiranyagarbha, or soul of the world. We should notice
here the complete reversal of our usual experience; as a rule we
put the waking state above the dreaming state, but in this
scheme the latter occupies the place of greater honour. Yet,
even at this stage of dreaming, the soul has not got rid of the
limiting conditions of individuality. Although it ‘moves about
happy in dreams, immortal, fearless V it is yet dependent on
bodily experiences for the materials presented to its conscious¬
ness. Hence we must rise to the third stage of dreamless
sleep, at which we attain to independence of the environment
and even of our own individuality, and become enfolded in the,
prajna Atman—the true self, the universal subject of thought.
In Kaushltaki Upanishad III. 3 we are helped to understand
this by a comparison with a dying man and the gradual infolding
of his faculties. All the distractions which have disturbed us
are merged in an absolute unity, and no wishes except the wish
for the self are left. The cosmical parallel of this stage is said to
be Is vara, but here we must conceive of Isvara in his most
indefinite phase, almost before the cosmical ignorance has
begun to operate.

Yet, especially in the later Upanishads, there are hints that
even this state of dreamless sleep is not the highest stage. It is
too negative and is also transient and liable to interruptions
breaking in from waking experience. The highest stage cannot
therefore be left dependent on what might be called the
accident of deep sleep, but must be assigned a more positive
basis in profound contemplation which we may voluntarily
induce and can secure against disturbance. We desire to reach
a state of being which shall be ‘coincident with absolute wake-
fulness’, and shall in a measure approach the self-luminousness
* Cf. Chhandogya U. VIII. 80.

IN THE UPANISHADS 33

of Brahman. This highest state, or turiya, cannot, of course, be
described, because of the nearness of its approach to Brahman,
and because Brahman is indescribable. In any case the highest
experience of identity is self-sufficing with a satisfaction that
we could only lessen by any attempt to put it into words.
Sometimes even a fifth state, unmanly is hinted at, which has
been described as the fourth state 4 arrived at maturity 5 .

In a slightly more detailed way the soul's ascent to God is
described under the figure of the five sheaths (.kosa ), and in this
connexion also we have the same mingling of psychological and
cosmical conception. There is (1) the annamaya sheath, or
sheath of food, at which stage the self is identified with the
material body. Then comes (2) the prdnamaya sheath, or
sheath of breath, in which we reach fullness of physical life,
and the organism is regarded in its dynamical rather than
in its statical aspect. This life fills the outer sheath, and is
to be regarded as akin to the universal life or world-force.
In penetrating to (3) the manomaya sheath, we enter the
psychical region. But we remain at the level of the purely
empirical self, and are more concerned with the contents of
consciousness than with the activity of underlying them. We
are still entirely dependent on external impressions ; religiously
we are under the control of authority, and ethically we aim
merely at private and personal ends. So, (4) we must transcend
this purely empirical level and reach, through the vijndnamaya
sheath, to the self that is above particular impressions and
desires. We must lay hold of the Reason that underlies all our
mental activity and attain the understanding that this Reason is
not merely individual, but universal. Yet, though this is the
highest point which the intellect or reason can reach, it is not
the central reality itself. We are still under the conditions of
duality; we still distinguish ourselves from the objects of our
thought. We cannot be satisfied until we penetrate the (5)
anandamaya kosa , or sheath of bliss, where subject and object
are one, where individuality is destroyed and absorption is
complete, where we close with all we flow from, soul with soul.
Now nothing remains but Brahman, grasped by us through
pure intuition, and Brahman is fullness of joy.

We have traced the stages of this intense and earnest search

p ■■

34 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

after unity. The process seems to have been very largely nega¬
tive, and what degree of reality may still attach to the experiences
of the various stages will have to be further discussed in
connexion with the final interpretations of the Vedanta. The
question immediately presents itself whether even at the end we
have reached reality or only blank nothingness? We may say
at once that we have not reached an Absolute which can be
described through the forms of sense-experience or even
through the categories of the understanding. Brahman stands
too near to us for characterization; we cannot stand apart from
Him and view Him as an object. Nor should we attempt to do
so, for Sankara’s later warning against ascribing subjective
qualities to the object seems but an echo of Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad III. 4. 2, ‘Thou couldst not see the true seer of
sight, thou couldst not hear the true hearer of hearing, nor
perceive the perceiver of perception, nor know the knower of
knowledge. This is thy Self who is within all.’ To impose
predicates upon Brahman is only a temporary expedient similar
to the operation of the goldsmith who mixes alloy with the gold
so that he may work upon it; and the confusion which results
when we attempt to apply finite predicates will open our eyes
to their inadequacy. Contradictory predicates, though both
true in a limited sense, should finally be regarded as cancelling
each other, and so setting us free for higher operations of
speculation. We may, e.g., apply the predicate of Being, but we
shall find that this is not Being in the empirical sense. ‘Thought’
in Brahman is not the mental activity to which we ordinarily
apply the term. The consciousness ascribable to Brahman
cannot include the relation of duality of subject and object.
Brahman is neither internally nor externally cognitive, neither
conscious nor unconscious. 1 All that we can say from the
ordinary point of view about the mental character of Brahman
is that Brahman is at least not lower than thought. The predi¬
cate of ‘bliss’ also is largely negative. It means complete
deliverance from what is not bliss, complete freedom from the
distractions, confusions, and miseries arising from our con¬
nexion with the empirical world.

Thus, in the failure of attempts to describe the Absolute of
*MdndukyaU.V,j .

IN THE UPANISHADS 35

the Upanishads, we seem to be compelled to lay our hands upon
our mouths and take refuge altogether in negation, in the
formula neti, neti —‘it is not so, it is not so.’ But it must not be
thought that we have reached the negation of Brahman himself.
In theory, at least, we have reached ultimate Reality and not
ultimate nothingness. It is true, of course, that some will say
that it is only in theory that we have escaped negation, and that,
in passing from the knowable to the Unknowable, we have
entered the realm of blank darkness and silence from which
there is no return.

We are not yet in a position to decide whether or not this
criticism is justified, but surely all would agree that even if the
intellect may fail in the adequate expression of religious truth,
this does not mean utter failure, but that above the workings
of the intellect we must postulate the flashing insight of in¬
tuition. What intuition can give us it may not be possible to
put into words, but yet, notwithstanding our silence, we may
be in contact with the deepest reality. Most competent scholars
refuse to admit that the Upanishads reach only negation. Prof.
Radhakrishnan, e.g., says, ‘It was not the intention of the
Upanishads to make of the deeper self an abstract nothingness.
It is the fullest reality, the completest consciousness, and not
a mere negative calm, untroubled by any unrest and unpolluted
by any blot or blemish. The logic of thought has in it a negative
movement, where it rises by repudiation of the finite, but this
is only a stage in the onward march. By the negative process
the self has to recognize that its essence is not in its finitude or
self-sufficiency. By the positive method it finds its true self, in
the life and being of all. All things exist within this true self.’ 1
It is possible that this interpretation is correct, but the question
of its validity is just the main problem of the later developments
of the Vedanta philosophy. ,

Meanwhile, it is sufficient to note that in the Upanishads
themselves there are, placed alongside of the negative move¬
ment, certain tendencies in the direction of a more positive
rehabilitation of the world of ordinary experience. Those who
were most persistent in denying the reality of the world, found,
nevertheless, that they had to make some efforts to live wi thin
1 Radhakrishnan, 163.

D Z

36 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

it, or at least to adjust their thought to it. Further, as Prof.
Radhakrishnan puts it, ‘The spiritual sense of the masses could
not be satisfied by these abstractions of the Upanishads.’ 1
They, and some of the philosophers along with them, were
dissatisfied by a conclusion so remote from ordinary fulfilments
of human aspiration, and by the somewhat artificial methods
by which it was indicated that such a conclusion could be
practically reached. The aoidya theory also contained within it
certain disconcerting inconsistencies. Thus it came about that
by means of symbols and metaphors they sought to re-establish
the ordinary world', whilst yet, by emphasis upon the fact that
they were only symbols, something of the essential character of
the idealistic position could be retained. When, however, sym¬
bols were once admitted, it was very difficult to select any which
did not implicitly suggest the reality of the external world.
Even the metaphor of the Self as that into which all things pass
‘as the ocean is the one thing into which all waters flow’ 2
implies the reality of' the rivers both before and after they
enter. Brahman is said to penetrate the world as the salt per¬
vades the water, but surely the water has also a reality, other¬
wise the salt could not pervade it. In fact, the symbols are in
general found to be expressive of a doctrine of emanation, and
much of the cosmology of the Upanishads is devoted to setting
forth the various stages of emanation.

Thus, in regardboth to the characterization of the ultimate unity
and its expression in the world of concrete existences, we may say
that the Upanishads at least leave it an open question whether
they insist on a negatively idealistic position or permit a positive
affirmation of the world. There can be no doubt, however, that
the fundamental concept of the Upanishads is that of unity, and
the prevailing motive is a search after this unity, discoverable as
akin to the soul of man. As Dr. Barnett puts it, ‘The principle
of the Upanishads is monism, spirituality, and human likeness.’3

A short note may be added as to the conditions under which,
from the point of view of the Upanishads, this relentless search
after unity was undertaken. It is said in the Kd.th.aka Upanishad
J. 5. 14, that ‘the path to the Self is hard, like the sharp edge of

> Radhakrishnan, 275. * Cf. Brihadaranyaka D\ IV. 5. 12.

3 Cf. Brahma-Knowledge , 19.

IN THE UPANISHADS 37

a razor’. The conditions may be divided into external and
internal. As regards the former, we may note that the aspirant
must belong to the proper class. Those who venture to teach
the Vedas to &udras are threatened with terrible penalties.
Women are, as a rule, excluded from the privileges of the
teaching. Even Yajnavalkya, after subjecting his wife to long
discussions on the subject of immortality, leaves her behind
when he goes into the forest, evidently not considering that she
is worthy to accompany him. The meaning of Upanishad which
is generally accepted, viz. 'secret doctrine’, suggests a body of
truth which is to be communicated only to a very few. Some¬
times the circle is still further narrowed through the idea that
the teacher has a monopoly in certain doctrines, and his rights
seem to be handed on from one generation to another by a kind
of apostolical succession. In any case, instruction by a teacher
was considered absolutely necessary, and this instruction was
spread over a long period. The conditions no doubt ministered
to the development of many estimable qualities, but can hardly
have been altogether favourable to intellectual freedom and
healthy criticism.

Besides the authority of the teacher, we have to take account
also of the authority of the Vedas and, in general, of the close¬
ness of the relations by which the Upanishads were linked with
the past. Opinion on this point seems to have been by no means
uniform amongst the authors of the Upanishads. The Chhan-
dogya Upanishad 1 suggests that the Vedas need be studied
only in the odd moments left over from other tasks; and the
older Upanishads generally seem to regard them merely as
means to an end, which means might be discarded when the
end had been attained. In the later Upanishads, however, as
the influence of the Brahmans increased, the study of the Vedas
acquired greater importance, and the attitude taken up towards
them came to resemble very much that of the medieval
European scholastics in relation to the stereotyped doctrines
of the Church.

Another condition which might be described as external—
inasmuch as it was not under the control of the aspirant—is
connected with a vague doctrine of election. The searcher after

1 VIII. is.

38 ANTICIPATIONS OF VED ANTIC IDEAS

truth has to take up a more or less passive attitude in reference
to the Self. He not only searches for the Self, but it might also
be said to search for him and to choose him. The Svetdsvatara
Upanishad, e.g., says that knowledge is 4 by grace of the Creator 5 , 1
and the Kdthaka Upa?iishad teaches that the Self ‘is attainable
by him alone whom it chooses 5 . 2 It should be noted, however,
that, although Deussen, Max Muller, and Pandit Tattvabhu-
shan approve of this translation, Gough favours a translation
which indicates a more active attitude—‘If he chooses the Self,
it is attainable by him. 5

As regards internal conditions, it may be said generally that
success in the quest is dependent on moral conditions. The
soul must be purified from vagrant desires, and works must be
relegated to their proper place. The short Isa Upanishad con¬
tains the prayer, ‘Keep us free from crooked evil, and we shall
offer thee praise 5 , and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad de¬
scribes the ideal student as one who has become ‘quiet, subdued,
satisfied, patient, collected 5 . Cf. also the Kdthaka Upanishad
II. 24, ‘He who has not first turned away from frivolity, who is
restless and uncollected, in whose heart there is not peace,
cannot through searching reach him. 5

There is great diversity of opinion as to the place of works in
the religious and philosophic quest, but on the whole the view
seems to be that works, though necessary as a preparatory
discipline, cannot have permanent value. They lead only to
a lower and transitory felicity; they do not ‘cling to a man 5 .
Yet there is apparent not infrequently a fear lest men may be
tempted to conclude prematurely that the preparatory stage
has been passed, and it is indicated that those who fall into this
danger enter into greater darkness of soul than those who trust
to works alone. 3 We should also remember that when we are
exhorted to ‘cease from works 5 and betake ourselves entirely to
contemplation, the contemplation which is enjoined is not
entirely passive, but is frequently strongly contrasted with
mental inactivity and sluggishness of mind.

1 111. 20. a II. 23.

3 Cf. Isa U. 12 and Brihadaranyaka U. IV. 4. 10.

IN THE VEDANTA SUTRAS

39

Vedanta Sutras

The Vedanta Sutras, otherwise known as the Brahma Sutras,
or the Sarirdka Sutras (which latter term signifies that they are
concerned with the ‘embodied soul’ of Brahma), are regarded
as constituting, along with the Upanishads and the Gita, the
Prasthanatraya, or ‘Canon’ of the Vedanta. We are at once
faced with the problem as to whether the Sutras can be con¬
sidered, as it were, in their own right. As has been pointed out
above ’‘’they had a place in the development of Indian philo¬
sophy’ which is strikingly suggestive of the character of that
development. They were intended to be a collection of short
sayings in which the essence of the Vedanta was to be preserved;
or, as Sankara puts it—in a phrase which is. non-committal as
regards their determinative value—‘they string together the
flowers of the Vedanta passages’. Above all they aim at brevity.
Their compilers are twitted with ‘delighting as much in the
saving of a short vowel as in the birth of a son , and Dr. Mac-
donnell says further, ‘The prose in which these works are com¬
posed is so compressed that the wording of the most laconic
telegram would appear diffuse compared with it.’ 2 The Sutras,
as we have seen, served the purpose of a compressed material
suitable for memorizing, and were the foundation for notes of
discussions continued through the centuries in the different
schools. As we have also seen, they would be difficult of under¬
standing even for those who took part in the discussions and
almost completely unintelligible for others. Various opinions
are held on the question as to whether the unintelligibility was
intentional or not. It may have been due to deliberate esoteric-
ism, a determination to keep the precious truths sacrosanct from
the so-called unworthy. Deussen holds that the obscurity can¬
not ‘be sufficiently explained either by striving after brevity
or a predilection for characteristic ways of expression. Rather
must we admit that the composer or composers intentionally
sought after obscurity, in order to make their work of treating
the secret doctrine of the Veda inaccessible to all those to whom
it was not opened up by the explanations of a teacher.’ 3 But it

! p< 2 Sanskrit Literature, 56.

3 Deussen, S. V. 27.

4 o ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

is possible also that the obscurity may have been the result
merely of that spirit of academic aloofness which steals over all
close corporations of scholars and renders them almost unaware
even of the existence of those who are outside the privileged
groups and unaccustomed to its peculiar terminology. But
whatever the motive may be, there is no doubt about the
obscurity. Words are omitted without the slightest compunc¬
tion, and even those that are left are not key-words to the
cryptic sentences, but merely mnemonics, serving the purpose
of assisting the memory of a well-drilled pupil rather than of
illuminating the understanding of an investigator coming
freshly to his task.

Thus the Sutras served mainly as lines of communication
between the old and the new, securing by their traditional
prestige and their compact serviceableness that the old should,
to a large extent, dominate the new, but yet, because of their
merely schematic character, permitting, within certain limits,
considerable variety and development in interpretation. From
this it comes about that although, taking advantage of the
opportunities afforded by mere outlines, the Sutras may selec¬
tively omit certain aspects of doctrine and emphasize others,
and thus acquire a distinctive character of their own, yet for
the most part their vagueness and unintelligibility will lead to
their surrender into the hands of commentators. If the Sutras
cannot be understood without the help of these later expositions,
it follows that the work of the commentators who explain will
gradually acquire greater importance than that which they are
explaining. For this reason it might seem hardly worth while
to attempt at this stage any detailed discussion of the Sutras
themselves, and advisable to pass on at once to the dominating
commentaries and view the Sutras merely in the light of the
ostensible expositions.

Yet it would be a mistake to go too far in this direction. We
have spoken of the Sutras as lines of communication, and we
might be satisfied with a barren metaphor of this kind if we
could establish a definite starting-point of the lines, and also
a definite ending. We could then indicate the main purport of
the Sutras by giving as full an account as possible of the data
from which they proceed and of the final interpretations in

IN THE VEDANTA SUTRAS 41

which their doctrines are consummated. But this is just what
we cannot do, and the problem is much more complex. The
Upanishads, which the Sutras set out to interpret, are very far
from presenting a definite system of doctrine allowing of only
one possible summary. As a matter of fact the Upanishads
supply material for many different systems of philosophy and
for very varying interpretations, and it cannot be decided
a priori which system or which interpretation the Sutras are
likely to favour. Moreover, when we look to the other end of
the line of communications, we find that the Sutras are suscep¬
tible of, and have actually been given, many different interpre¬
tations, and that, therefore, it is impossible to select any one
commentary, as, e.g., Sankara’s, and say dogmatically that it
may be accepted without question as the only continuation of
the real meaning of the Sutras. Deussen, indeed, says without
hesitation that Sankara is throughout in agreement with the
Sutras , but other scholars, possessing equal if not greater
authority, declare that Sankara and the Sutras contradict each
other on many important points, and that other commentators,
as, e.g., Ramanuja, give more trustworthy expositions of the
essential meaning of the Sutras. In view of such difference of
opinion, therefore, it would seem necessary to attempt a slight
and purely provisional characterization of the Sutras in order
that we may be able at a later stage to place Sankara and
Ramanuja in a proper relation to them.

Deussen describes the relation of the Sutras to the Upani¬
shads as similar to that of Christian dogmatics to the New
Testament. 1 This comparison is perhaps rather misleading in
view of the conciseness of the Sutras and the tendency to
expansion manifested by at least some systems of Christian
dogmatics. The comparison suggested by Dr. Carpenter would
seem to be more serviceable. He says, 'The Sutras have a dis¬
tinct resemblance to the books of “Sentences” which served as
the foundation of theological teaching in the medieval schools
of Europe. They were based on Scripture and the Fathers, and
ran a parallel course in time with Indian production, leading
off with those of Isodore of Seville (560-636). Most famous
was the collection of Peter the Lombard, Magister Sententiarum y
1 Cf. Deussen, S. V. 2,1.

42 ANTICIPATIONS OF YEDANTIC IDEAS

whose work was completed between 1145 an< i II 5 °> * n f° ur
books dealing with God, the creation, the virtues, the seven
sacraments, and the “last things”. It gained immense popularity
and became the accredited text-book in almost every theological
school. Numberless commentaries were devoted to its eluci¬
dation, no fewer than 180 being written in England.’ 1 .

The dates of the Sutras have been very variously estimated.
Deussen 2 puts the date very late. He lays great stress on the
connexion between Badarayana (the reputed author of the
Sutras) and Jaimini, the author of the most important book
on the Karma Mimarhsa. Badarayana and Jaimini repeatedly
quote each other by name, and this suggests to Deussen that
what we now have is a composite work edited by Vyasa, who
might possibly be connected by a kind of apostolical anticipa¬
tion with Sankara, and be only some two hundred years earlier
than his commentator (who flourished about the ninth century).
Thus the date which Deussen favours would be about a.d. 600.
Deussen also lavs stress on the priority of the Gita to the Sutras,
on which point, however, he is definitely contradicted by Max
Muller ,3 who argues that the apparent quotations from the
Gita may well be from other sources, and holds as his general
opinion that Badarayana is not dependent on any authorities
which can be assigned to a period later than the Christian era.
Jacobi dates the Sutras between a.d. 200 and a.d. 450.4 p ro f.
S. N. Das Gupta pushes the date back to the second century
B.c. He holds that an earlier date is impossible because of the
references to many other systems contained in the Sutras. But
he would fain go farther, and it is almost with reluctance that
he consents to so late a date. Some Indian scholars would go
as far back as 500 B.c. It seems necessary, however, to leave
room for a considerable amount of development between the
date of the early Upanishads and the composition of the Sutras.
Thibaut holds that the ‘collection of Sutras was preceded by
a long series of preparatory literary efforts of which they merely
represent the highly condensed outcome’ .5 Dr. Farquhar is in
agreement with Thibaut, and also takes the view that a long
succession of scholars is behind the author, the names of seven

1 Carpenter, 299. * Cf. S. V, 21.

Cf.J. A* O. S. $ 1911, p. 201. 5

3 Miiller, S. S. m.
Cf. S. B . E. XXXIV, p. xii.

IN THE VEDANTA SUTRAS 43

of these appearing in the work itself. 1 He also offers the more
particular view that a compendium was in existence about the
beginning of our era, and that this was the precursor of the
Sutras as we now have them. In this way he would explain the
reference in the Gita to ‘well thought out verses of Brahma
Sutras’, 3 and incidentally dispose of Prof. Das Gupta’s conten¬
tion that the Brahma Sutras (as we have them) were already
regarded as an authoritative work by the dualists and therefore
might quite naturally be referred to in the Gita. On the whole,
the evidence points to a comparatively late date, certainly not
earlier than the Christian era. But, whatever the exact date may
be, there are traces of the existence already of many diverse
views. References are found, e.g., to three different views of
the relation of the soul to God; one, associated with the name
of Asmarathya, that the soul is neither absolutely different from
God nor absolutely the same; a second, associated with Audu-
lomi, that the soul, while temporarily different, is by release
altogether merged in Brahman; and a third, associated with
Kasakritsna, that the soul is absolutely non-different from
Brahman. 3

In regard to the special teaching of the Sutras it may be said
that they treat the Upanishads with great reverence, and, like
them, emphasize the religious and moral conditioning of philo¬
sophical inquiry. 4 On the whole their tendency is towards
a dualistic and theistic modification of the strictly monistic
position which may be taken as fundamental in the Upanishads,
and which was afterwards more strongly developed by Sankara.
They favour the interpretation afterwards adopted by Ramanuja
rather than Sankara’s own doctrine. They do not draw a firm
distinction between two orders of knowledge or between a
Brahman without qualities and a Brahman with qualities, and
they show little sympathy with an extreme interpretation of the
maya doctrine. Whether this tendency in a theistic direction
is due to the influence of the Gita or itself contributed to the
particular character of the latter, will, of course, be decided
differently according to the view taken of the chronological

1 Cf. Farquhar, 126. 2 Gita, XIII. 4 -.

3 Cf. Thibaut, S. B.E. XXXIV, p. xix, and a corresponding paragraph m
Farquhar, 128. 4 Cf. Sutras, I. 1. 1.

44 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS

relation between the Sutras and the Gita. It seems probable
that they belonged to much the same school of thought, and
general considerations at least prepare us for the view that
Sankara, and perhaps one or two of his immediate predecessors,
found it necessary to give expression to a reaction against the
dualistic tendencies of the school of thought associated with the
Sutras.

The Gita

To a very brief characterization of the teaching of the Gita
we must now turn. It had its place, as we have seen, as a mem¬
ber of the Prasthanatraya, or £ Canon 5 , of the Vedanta, and
therefore must be considered in any survey of the development
preparatory to Sankara’s teaching. It is more of a poem than
a treatise, and its importance is not, strictly speaking, philo¬
sophical, but lies rather in the influence which it had upon
popular thought, and in the expression which it gave to the
theistic and slightly dualistic elements latent in the speculations
of the Upanishads. As was suggested in the last paragraph, it
does not seem to be essential to decide whether its dualism is
preparatory to that of the Sutras or is itself strengthened by the
teaching of the latter. Thibaut takes the former view and Prof.
Das Gupta the latter. 1 But whatever may be the proper decision
on this point, it can easily be seen that the composite character
of such a work as the Gita would naturally give encouragement
to dualistic tendencies.

As regards the inter-relation of its elements, we may either
take the view that the poem was a late Upanishad, somewhat
similar in type to the §veiasvatara Upanishad , and containing
the outlines of the generally monistic teaching of the Upani¬
shads and that this monism was then brought into relation with
the teaching of the Bhagavata sect, whose worship centred in
Krishna, regarded as an embodiment of Vishnu. Or the matter
may be viewed from the other side, and, with Prof. Garbe, it
may be said that the poem shows evidences of the transforma¬
tion of primitive trust in a warrior leader such as Krishna into
faith in a personal supreme spirit. Krishna becomes identified

1 Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV, p. cxxvi, and Das Gupta, 422, and for further
discussion of date, Farquhar, 91, and Urquhart, Pantheism and the Value of
Life, 379.

IN THE GlTA 45

with Vishnu or Vasudeva, the latter being either a popular
designation of the former or the name of a deity already almost
identified with him. But Vishnu (or Vasudeva) is also on the
point of being identified with the impersonal non-qualitative
Brahman—the subject of the more severely monistic doctrine
of the Upanishads. Thus, from whatever direction we view the
process of modification, Vishnu obtains the elevation which
results from identification with the Absolute, and at the same
time the Absolute is prevented from receding into these depths
of negation and unapproachability which are suggested by some
aspects of Upanishad teaching. The All-God becomes associ¬
ated with qualities which constitute him a definite object of
worship, and from him 'the world-process emerges—as a real
emanation and not simply as an illusive shadow-play.

To a certain extent the tendency in the direction of realism
and even dualism may be ascribed to the influence of the
Sankhya philosophy. The writer of the Gita was not unaffected
by the desire to adjust his teaching to the requirements of this
philosophy, especially in its readiness to assign independent
existence to matter, and many of his practical precepts owe
much to the conception of external and resistless physical might.
He does not of course go so far as consciously and definitely to
admit the validity of this conception, but we cannot but see
traces of pre-occupation with such a view, and the effect of it
is indicated in the inclination towards a realistic view of the
world.

Practically, as Prof. Das Gupta points out, the ‘Bhagavadglta
tried to mark out a middle path between the austere discipline
of meditative abstraction, on the one hand, and the course of
duties of sacrificial action ... in the life of a new type of Yogin
on the other, who should combine in himself the best parts of
the two paths, devote himself to his duties, and yet abstract
himself from all selfish motives associated with desires’. 1

Thus on a rapid and conjunct view of the Prasthanat raya or
‘Canon’ we are left with an impression that no one tendency can
claim absolute ascendancy, but that, if monism and a certain
degree of negation seem to prevail in the Upanishads, in the
other two members of the canon there are at least signs of a
1 Das Gupta, 227.

46 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS
dualistic tendency of sufficient strength to make it intelligible
that in the minds of some a renewed emphasis on monistic
principles would seem to be necessary. As we trace the develop¬
ment further, we find such an emphasis in Gaudapada and his
Karikas.

Gaudapada

Gaudapada is a noteworthy figure in the tradition which San¬
kara inherited. There does not seem to be sufficient reason to
doubt the authenticity of the name or to place the date of the
work attributed to him so early as to render quite impossible
his historical connexion with Sankara. The Gaudapada with
whom we have to do is the reputed author of a poem known
as the Mandukya Karika, and should not be identified with the
earlier author of a commentary on Isvara Krishna’s Sankhya
Karikas, as Max Muller seems to suggest. 1 Our Gaudapada
was connected by direct links of historical anticipation with
Sankara, and the latter speaks even of having come under the
direct influence of Gaudapada. It would therefore probably
be correct, if we accept the usual dating of Sankara (to be
discussed later), to place Gaudapada about the end of the eighth
century a.d.

His work—the Mandukya Karika —is one of the earliest
embodiments of the doctrine of strict monism. Sankara cor¬
dially welcomes him as a predecessor and declares that to him
is due the credit of recovering and restating the absolutist creed
which he holds to be the true teaching of the Veda. In rever¬
ential language Sankara thus refers to his preceptor: ‘That
great guru ... on finding all the people sinking in the ocean
made dreadful by the crocodiles of rebirth, out of kindness
for all people, by churning the great ocean of the Veda by
his churning rod of wisdom, recovered what lay deep in the
heart of the Veda, and is hardly attainable even by the im¬
mortal gods.’ 3

It is acknowledged on all hands that Gaudapada was greatly
influenced by Buddhistic teaching, and it is indeed possible—
as alleged by some—that he may have been himself a Buddhist.
Prof. Poussin says of him that it is impossible to read his verses

1 Muller, S. S. } 224. .

'* Quoted by Das Gupta, 423.

IN GAUDAPADA’S KARIKAS 47

‘without being struck by the Buddhistic character of the leading
ideas and of the wording itself. 1 He seems to have used the
Buddhist doctrine of the Void’ as a key to the interpretation of
the teaching of the Upanishads, and it has been suggested, as,
e.g., by Prof. Das Gupta, 2 that he selected one of the smallest
Upanishads—the Mandukya —and at the same time one that
had much to say about dreams, as the basis of his Commentary,
in order that he might not be drawn aside by the multiplicity
of details in the larger Upanishads from his main purpose of
concentrating attention on this truth of illusion. 3 It must not
be supposed, however, that Gaudapada used this small Upani-
shad simply as a peg on which to hang Buddhistic teaching. 1
To whatever extent others may differ from him in the interpre¬
tation of it, we must in fairness believe that he regarded
Buddhistic doctrine as suggesting to him an interpretation
which could actually be found in the Upanishad, and was,
indeed, its fundamental truth.

It is significant of Gaudapada’s attitude that the word may a,
which was in previous literature of very rare occurrence, is to
be found in no fewer than sixteen passages in his Karika, and
one of the four chapters is entitled Vaitathya, or ‘unreality’.
His view is that we may discuss, if we like, theories of creation
and cosmogony, but it is of little importance which we adopt,
for, after all, all plurality, and indeed all creation, is a dream,
and the truth lies in the One. Cf. Mandukya Upanishad II. io,
‘Therefore this false notion arises from some cause due to
ignorance, and so it is unreal, and would cease when instruc¬
tion is imparted by a Teacher. This is the saying of the wise,
that “when One is known, the Two cease to exist”. The illusion
is so extreme that it can hardly have that degree of actuality
which demands destruction; having practically no reality, it
does not stand in need of ‘burning’ or removal. We do not
require spades and shovels to remove a morning mist; and when

* ci.jf. JR. A. s., Vol. X, p. 134.

3 P. 429.

3 Cf. especially Mandukya U, I. 7, ‘others think that the creation is like
unto a dream or an illusion.’ Madhva’s comment on this is that people of this
class are ‘ignorant’. Prof. S. C. Vasu suggests also that it is ridiculous to
think that the Almighty should revert to illusion. It is only, he argues,
a hypnotist, who cannot actually produce an object, who is compelled to
create an illusion. Cf. S. B. H. Mandukya, 12.

48 ANTICIPATIONS OF VEDANTIC IDEAS
truth arises, the world-illusion disappears, as the morning mist
fades away before the rising of the sun.

The world of ordinary experience is to be placed in the same
category as dreams. There are indeed many differences between
the phenomena of dreams and those of waking reality, but they
have in common the condition of ‘being seen’. Both of them
are, in other words, the product of imagination. Further the
subject or conceiver of these inner states is itself unreal, at least
in its supposed distinction from the All.f Truth lies most of all
in the Void, in the infinite of empty space (the akasa). Spaces
enclosed in the jar or in the individual life, may appear to be
separate, but when the jar is broken or the illusion of the jlva
is dispelled, then follows complete merging in the whole of
characterless being. No duality remains anywhere; all particu¬
larity is mere illusion and magic. The world of becoming is full
of puzzling contradictions, and, in true Parmenidean fashion,
Gaudapada holds that it can be understood only when it is
completely denied./ The ordinary experiences of birth, life, and
death are popular superstitions, and the sage who is worthy of
the name will penetrate the illusion./The categories of causality,
&c., cannot properly be used, for they immediately reveal
insuperable contradictions and absurdities. If, e.g. you admit,
with the Sankhyans, that cause and effect are inseparable, the
logical result of such identification is that the effect will have to
be regarded as unoriginated like the cause and the cause will be
impermanent like the effect.

So, he urges, let us by wisdom seek to penetrate the illusion.
In and by consciousness is generated the illusion of both per-
ceiver and perceived, and our consciousness is not separate
from the eternal consciousness. Thus the power of illusion may
be traced back to God Himself, unreality may be placed at the
very heart of things, and everything except the one be dissolved
in the conception of cosmic deception. The variety and forces
of the world, and the life which we live within it, will all alike
be emptied of meaning. Our life may be compared to the con¬
tinuous circle produced by a whirling firebrand, and in our life
also by a metaphorical alatasanti (or extinction of the firebrand),
we may discover that all ordinary experience is unreal as the
circle of light produced by children at play in the gathering

IN GAUDAPADA’S KARIKAS 49

twilight. Soon all will be dark, and in the darkness the truth
lies hidden, and in the sense of unreality the real. 1

Negation could hardly go farther than this, and it was left for
Sankara to take up the development of thought, and show how
negation might reasonably go almost as far as this, and yet not
lead to utter futility but form the way of approach to a reality
positive in the very highest degree.

1 Cf. Prof. P. D. Shastri, Doctrine of Maya, 84.

E

Ill

g Aft KARA AND RAMANUJA: THEIR LIVES, THEIR
COMMENTARIES, AND THEIR TRADITIONAL
PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

I T has been already pointed out that the peculiar character
of the Sutras with which we are specially concerned has led
to the general necessity of commentaries. Whilst other Sutras
might possibly be understood without assistance, the case was
altogether different with the two supreme Sutras (of which the
Vedanta Sutras is one). Their mnemonic character and technical
language made commentaries indispensable, and they could be
made intelligible only if elucidated by those who were qualified
to reproduce their original setting and proceed consistently from
it. A recent Indian writer says, As for the Sutias, it is in theii
nature to be easily elastic; and when unsupported by tradition,
nothing indeed can be made out of them.’ 1 The commentators,
of whom Sankara and Ramanuja are the chief, set themselves
to restate the thoughts suggested or suggestible by the Sutras.

The indefiniteness and vagueness of the Upanishads also
provided an additional necessity for Commentaries. Seeing
that the Sutras, although they purported to give the essence of
the Upanishad teaching, had yet failed, by reason of their
obscurity, to present this teaching in any authoritative form, it
still remained open to, and, indeed, obligatory upon, succeeding
scholars to establish what they regarded as the true doctrine of
the sacred literary deposit. Their function, as they conceived it,
was not to initiate new speculation, except perhaps in compara¬
tively insignificant details, but to make clear the exact meaning
of the authorities whom they professed to revere.

We have already referred to the esotericism of previous
literature and to Deussen’s suggestion that this esotericism was
deliberate. While we cannot subscribe altogether to the view
that the esotericism was intentional, yet it is undoubted that
such an attitude must have formed the background of thought,
and it is exceedingly natural that the commentators should be
influenced by the same spirit. This would almost inevitably

1 Aiyar, 73.

LIFE AND TEACHING OF SANKARA 51

express itself in the endeavour to enhance the value of their
esoteric possession. They would proceed to do this by elaborat¬
ing it as much as possible, by developing suggestions into
systems and intuitions into arguments, so that the initiates
might feel that they had not been led on by false hopes, but had
really been made to share in an inheritance of the greatest
significance. And seeing that the commentators had bestowed
so much labour upon it, they might quite justifiably feel that
they were conferring a boon which was very much worth giving.
The greater the elaboration the greater the value of what they
had to impart. But we must not think of them as influenced
exclusively by an esoteric spirit. While cherishing this and
making as much of it as possible, they at the same time wished
to give interpretations which would be more widely intelligible
and acceptable. For their own reputation they would wish to
do this; and motives also of a higher and benevolent character
would enter in. ^While Sankara always preserved an esoteric
kernel of his thought, which he declared to be only for the few,
yet he was frequently also animated by a genuinely missionary
spirit, under the influence of which he felt himself called upon
to dilute his thought for the benefit of the multitude.

It should be noted that a Bhashya—the name often given to
a commentary—is not properly a commentary in the usually
accepted sense of the word. Its primary aim is not to elucidate
a text (although it may do this with considerable thoroughness),
but rather to construct a philosophy on the basis of the authori¬
tative text selected. A comparison may again be made with the
procedure in Indian music according to which the rag, or
fixed form, while dominating any new composition, at the
same time permits of very considerable variation.

Life of Sankara

Sankara is the earliest of the commentators on the Sutras
whose work is extant, and he is still regarded as the most
important in the whole succession. He has been described in
glowing terms as ‘the greatest intellect of the world’ and ‘the
most towering personality of Hinduism in its renaissance
period’. 1 He is said to have been born at Kaladi in North
1 Cf. Pal, 1 and 16.

E 2

5 2 3 ANKARA AND RAMANUJA

Travancore about the year a.d. 788. There is considerable
unanimity about the year of his birth, but whether he died at
the comparatively early age of thirty-two, or lived to a good old
age, perhaps until about the year 850, seems to be a matter of
great uncertainty. To those who argue that 820 was the date
of his death the reply is made , that this was merely the date of
his final renunciation of all ties which bound him to ordinary
life; and, generally speaking, biographers seem to be undecided
whether the greater honour will accrue to Sankara if he is
regarded as an example of youthful precocity or found to be
a depositary of the garnered wisdom of a lengthy life.

His biographers are numerous, but it cannot be said that they
supply us with a very trustworthy record. Indeed some of them
frankly disavow any direct dependence on historical fact. ‘What
have we to do with the minor incidents of Sankara’s life?’ says
Mr. D. N. Pal. 1 ‘We have his philosophy, we have his religion,
we have his personality, we have his Ethics. All Hindus . . .
breathe in Sankara’s spirit.’ The poverty of biographical
material may indeed be taken as simply an illustration of the
self-effacing spirit of all India’s great religious teachers; it is but
fit ting that their outer life should be a blank and that the details
of it should not remain in the memory of man. Consequently
it is argued that, if there are not facts available by the interpreta¬
tion of which we may arrive at an appreciation of the spirit of
a man, it is quite permissible, after having obtained from his
teaching some indication of his character, to construct a body
of ‘facts’ suitable for expressing the spirit of this character. We
may argue that ‘if this is not true, then something like it is true’,
or we may apply the very elastic measurement which seems to
be suggested by Mr. Pal in such words as ‘It is a very probable
story, and assuredly a true story’. 2

The way is thus opened for the expression of enthusiastic
admiration under the guise of the forms of biography. It must
not, however, be thought that Indian writers are all liable to
this tendency. Mr. C. N. Krishnaswami Aiyar, e.g., takes up
a much more critical attitude, and speaks very severely of ‘the
misguided enthusiasm of later admirers from whom every
great person has reason to pray to be saved’.

1 Pal, 96. a lb. 57-

LIFE AND TEACHING OF SANKARA S3

But it would on the whole be true to say that in considering
the lives of Sankara we have for the most part to deal with facts
which are under the governance of ideas, or with facts which
have burst through the limitations of history and are on the
way to becoming transparent expressions of spiritual truths.
And, after all, there is not much reason to complain, for
there is abundant justification in the frequent contention of
Indian biographers that Sankara's teaching is of much more
importance than his life, and we need not be too anxious to
distinguish rigidly between history and drama, or be too
critical of attempts to give this teaching an appropriate setting
in concrete circumstance if this setting helps us to understand
the teaching more adequately. Even if, on occasion, the alleged
facts are merely the product of ‘misguided enthusiasm', the
statement of them is useful as a proof of the existence of the
enthusiasm and an indication of its extent, and we may safe¬
guard ourselves by valuing the enthusiasm according to our
estimate of the intrinsic excellence of the teaching rather than
on the basis of the facts which are supposed to have evoked it.

With this proviso—that the enthusiasm should be related to
the ideas rather than to the facts’—we may proceed to give a
brief account of the details of his life which are fairly generally
agreed upon. Considerable mystery surrounds his birth, and
an instance of retrospective narrative, wise after the event, is
immediately forthcoming in the story that Sankara's mother,
having been offered the choice of having a number of dunces
or only one short-lived but clever son, decided in favour of the
latter. His steadfastness of purpose, even in his early years, is
indicated by the stress which his biographers lay upon the
degree of family opposition which he had to overcome in order
to carry out his desire of becoming a sannydsi.

One event of his early life is well authenticated and of con¬
siderable importance. His search for a Guru led him to become
a pupil of Govinda, who, as we have already seen, was himself
a pupil of Gaudapada. This shows that Sankara was at the
beginning of his career brought under the influence of the
rigorously monistic doctrine which was the prevailing doctrine
of Gaudapada's Karikds; and here there is also indicated a
channel of Buddhistic influence. An entirely apocryphal story,

54 Sankara and rAmanuja

chronologically of course impossible, tells how, after Sankara
had settled at Benares, he was visited by Vyasa, the reputed
author of the Vedanta-sutras , and had many long and learned
conversations with him. This story might be taken as indicating
allegorically Sankara’s early interest in the meaning of the
Sutras , and might also suggest the beginning of controversy as
to whether he was properly interpreting them, the visit of Vyasa
being cited of course in order to show that Sankara had oppor¬
tunities of first-hand knowledge such as almost made mistake
impossible. Of more importance are his disputations with
Mandana Misra, the favourite pupil of Kumarila Bhatta, who
was famous as a reactionary from Buddhism, and a staunch
defender of the ritual and sacrificial practices which had been
handed down from Vedic times—the way of works, or the
karma-marga. In Sankara’s victorious disputation with Man¬
dana we have a presentation of the former’s fundamental
preference for the way of knowledge over the way of works.
At the same time the contrast between the vigorous persecution
which Mandana, as well as his predecessor Kumarila Bhatta,
directed against the Buddhists, and the more tolerant attitude
of Sankara towards his vanquished opponents is an expression
of Sankara’s catholicity, and also a parallel in the practical sphere
to that theoretical method which allowed him unconcernedly to
place side by side esoteric and exoteric truth and permit con¬
tinued adherence to the latter until such time as the former
should prevail. In passing, also, we may allude to the pathetic
but beautiful story of Sankara’s interview with his dying
mother. She had asked him to discourse on matters which
would bring peace to her soul, but he began to expound the
abstruse doctrines of his philosophy. On finding that these
gave her no comfort, he fell back upon hymns of devotion which
he himself had composed in honour of Siva. The inclusion of
this story—whatever its historicity—indicates an impression in
the minds of his biographers that Sankara’s doctrines were too
abstruse for the ordinary mind and needed to be accompanied
by some accommodation to the simpler understanding.

Also the story of his interview with one of the Kapalikas (or
skull-men), who asked Sankara for the gift of his head as a
sacrifice to Kali, urging that, according to the principles of the

LIFE AND TEACHING OF SANKARA 55

Advaita philosophy, Sankara ought to be completely indifferent
to the loss of such an appurtenance of individuality, reads
almost like a satire designed to bring out the unpractical nature
of Sankara’s teaching.

Sankara spent several years at Benares, and it was probably
there that he made a beginning with the chief works with which
his name is associated. But his life was essentially that of a
peripatetic philosopher, and tradition has it that he travelled
all over India. He seems to have had considerable gifts of
organization, and several Mutts, or houses of monastic learning,
which continue to this day, owe their origin to him. He is said
to have ended his life at Kedarnath, in the far north of India,
but whether his death took place in 820 or thirty years later is
still a matter of uncertainty.

Provisioned summary of Sankara s teaching.

We may give here a preliminary indication of the main points
in Sankara’s doctrine. By representative Indian writers San¬
kara is described as a ‘rigorous monist ’, 1 and perhaps such a'
phrase gives us most concisely the key-note of his teaching. He
asserts"one reairtyi'affd only oniTfor there is no such things
pluHIiTy or differehce anywhere, and, therefore, no beginning
anTno ending, nothing but that nearest experience which comes
toeach one of us, the consciousness of the self, intell igent just

SeSmsTitir’

iAiWhial 7lf w ecan merge all things in our consciousness, and
merge ourselves as individuals in the universal consciousness,
we shall reach the goal of all our striving, the solution of all our
difficulties. If we can negate the world we sha ll fin d that the
world is well lost, for there is really _n ^
to l ose, n(^m^but^theJjl^srva 4 ^B&^.f^Sg^lif^^j:^^.^V ,
th e~fundamental. self-luminous Being. '

And yet even in the shortest sumfnary, it is necessary to
express the doubt whether the mood which lies behind this
attitude is really so negative as might at first sight appear. Can
we go so far as to call it altogether negative? May it not be
rather that simpler but more fundamental feeling of the stupen¬
dousness of the universe which overwhelms mankind at the first

1 Cf. Kirtikar , 2.

56 Sankara and rAmanuja

dawning of the religious consciousness? The burden of aware¬
ness seems almost too great for us to bear, and would crush us
were not some means found of lessening its weight. And may
not the human mind under such conditions find refuge in the
thought that much of the burden is unreal—in fact that it is all
unreal, except in so far as we find ourselves again in it and dis¬
cover that the seeming oppression is but the insistence upon us
of the universal in which we live and move and have our being?

Sankara’s thought may be followed along the usual lines made
familiar to us by idealist philosophy. Being is essentially relative
to thought. No object can exist except as known—'Where there
is no knowledge, there is no knowable. 51 And carrying forward
with him the ideal of knowledge suggested even in the days of
Vedic sacrifice in India—the ideal of the merging of the knower
and the known, of the mystic communion of subject and object
following upon the destruction of the separateness of the wor¬
shipper and the worshipped—Sankara proceeds to sublate all
the distinctions which divide the subject and the object, and
the variety of particular objects from each other. Space, time,
causality, and other categories both definite and vague, even
the thought of difference itself, are all swept out of the way
until the soul is left only with the sense of the unity of individual
experience. And the differences disappear in pure being with
which consciousness also is found to be at one.

Our consciousness is not really individual, for it is beginning¬
less, and no individual can be without a beginning. It has more¬
over no lurking plurality within itself, no distinction of a knower
behind his knowledge which may form the basis of a quasi¬
material separateness. Sankara warns us against attributing
objective qualities to the subject, by which warning he means
that we should not attempt to view the self in an external way,
as if it were merely an ordinary object, popularity and particu-
larly conceived. Consciousness is not possessed by some entity
beyond consciousness, but is pure consciousness, ultimate being,
transparent through and through. There can be no distinction
between the individual and the universal, any more than
between the individual subject and the object known. Pure
undifferenced unity is all that can be established.

1 Gf. Sankara’s Commentary on Prasna XJ. VI. 2.

LIFE AND TEACHING OF SANKARA 57

But whence then came the world with all the details of our
ordinary experience? We cannot avoid its recognition, but we
should regard it as only phenomenal, as having merely vyava-
harika or practical existence. Even this amount of existence is
due to ignorance, and not to our ignorance only but to a cosmic
ignorance This cosmic ignorance when combined with power
becomes a principle of illusion or Maya. This cosmic, phan¬
tasm-creating energy is beginningless,_ and, although thejjhi-
mate Being or Brahman is without qualities or without plurality,
somehow orbther it becomes attaclied to him. It is both sat and
asat, the first as not being due only to our invention, and the
second as being, after all, only phenomenal. It is an eternal
power producing unreal appearances. ... .

It is difficult to unfold all that is contained in this double
mode of conceiving the principle as at once real and umeal.
But it might be a step forward in interpretation to say that the
principle is an absolute expression of the idea of the mex-
plicable—according to Prof. Radhakrishnan, a statement of a
metaphysical position which might thus be described: As for
the metaphysical ramifications which also exist, the non-dualist
says, well, they are there, and there is an end of it. We do not
know and cannot know why. It is all a contradiction and yet
it is actual.’ 1 Now, from the point of view of a completely
rounded philosophy, the idea of the inexplicable carries with it
a slightly depreciatory significance, and perhaps this idea of
subjective disapproval is intended to be conveyed in some of
the interpretations of the term Maya, which, notwithstanding
many rehabilitations, never quite detaches itself from the idea
of illusion, deepening occasionally into the ideas of delusion and
deception. In any case it tends always to suggest something
of the idea of a lower reality, what should not he from the point
of view of true knowledge. At the same time this conception of
Maya does afford us some relief from the burden of the inex¬
plicable, just as on awaking from a troublesome and perplexing
dream we are comforted by discovering that it is nothing but
a dream.

In association with the power of Maya , Brahman becomes
Isvara, the Absolute with qualities, the Creator, the Preserver,
l Radhakrishnan, 1 .35.

S 8 Sankara and rAmAnuja

and Destroyer of the world. In this way the phenomenal world
may, in contradiction to the Buddhists, be provisionally
accepted, and the variety of nature, as well as the existence of
individual souls may be to a certain extent explained, all
materialistic and purely naturalistic theories being, as a conse¬
quence, ruled out of court. But yet, however perfect the sys¬
tematization may be, it has to be confessed in the end that the
universe thus constructed is not real in the fullest sense, and our
salvation will consist in attaining this knowledge. Such know¬
ledge will not be an active force destroying error, but simply
a recognition that the content of error does not exist.

Our liberation will proceed by various stages, as we gradually
get rid of the limiting adjuncts or ‘sheaths’ of our personality.
We rise from the life of pure impulse to that of ritual observance,
which will lead us by the ‘way of the fathers’—th epitriyana —
to an existence of considerable, though temporary, enjoyment.
The next stage is marked by a worship of the highest qualitative
Brahman, and ‘by way of the gods’—the Devayana —will bring
us to the divine regions where we shall live in communion with
this Brahman of qualities. But when this qualitative Brahman
is merged in the Brahman without qualities, we ourselves may
share in this identification, and reach, or rather discover, a state
in which we are united with the Para-Brahman, without the
slightest difference remaining.

Life and Teaching of Ramanuja

After this purely provisional account of the Advaitavada of
Sankara we may turn to a short treatment of the life and teaching
of Ramanuja, in order that we may set the two great teachers
in relation to each other, and be in a position to decide which
of them we ought chiefly to follow in our further exposition of
the Vedanta. That some sort of choice has to be made between
them will be evident from the vigorous way in which Ramanuja
himself states his opposition to the doctrines of Sankara.
Adverse judgement could hardly be more uncompromisingly
expressed than in the following passage: ‘This entire theory
rests on a fictitious foundation of altogether hollow and vicious
arguments, incapable of being stated in definite logical alterna¬
tives, and devised by men who are destitute of those particular

LIFE AND TEACHING OF RAMANUJA 59

qualities which cause individuals to be chosen by the Supreme
Person revealed in the Upanishads ; whose intellects aie dark¬
ened by the impression of beginningless evil; and who thus have
no insight into the meaning of words and sentences, into the
real purport conveyed by them, and into the procedure of
sound argumentation, with all its methods depending on per¬
ception and other instruments of right knowledge. The theory
therefore must needs be rejected by all those who, through
texts, perception, and the other means of knowledge assisted
by sound reasoning—have an insight into the true nature of
things.’ 1 This quotation not only indicates vehemence of oppo¬
sition, but is also a guide to the points upon which criticism
was to be specially directed. It shows, amongst other things, that
Ramanuja disapproved of the idea of a beginningless power of
Maya and did not share the distrust of human faculties therein
implied; and also that, in his opinion, Sankara was not a reliable
interpreter of the Upanishads, which pointed to the existence
rather of a Supreme Person than of a characterless Absolute. 3

Ramanuja is important both on his own account and on
account of the tradition which he represents. His Commentary
is the next oldest to that of Sankara, and is itself a brilliant piece
of exposition and criticism, described by a recent competent
writer as one of the most influential works that India has
produced. 3 And the same writer seems disposed to regard him,
in relation to Sankara, as a typical representative of one of the
fundamental metaphysical tendencies in the history of human
thought: ‘For two Magnitudes of the highest rank struggle here
with each other in Sankara and Ramanuja, who are only their
representatives. The almost altogether mysterious and over¬
whelming, world-destroying, ultimately irrational, inconceiv¬
able, undefinable Absolute Unity is in conflict with the Lord,
the feeling, willing, personal, rational, loving, and beloved God
of the heart and conscience.’ 4

1 Cf. S. B. E. XLVIII. 8. . . .. ■

2 The vigour of language in the passage just cited almost justifies the
comment of Prof. Otto, ‘And now begins the struggle of proposition against
proposition, assertion against assertion—a struggle in the truest sense, breast
to breast, and knee to knee, a struggle of the utmost intensity, without pause
to draw breath or take, until limb by limb the opponent is overcome and
crushed to the earth* (Otto, Siddhanta des Ramanuja , 2).

3 Cf. Otto, op, dt., p. 1. 4 Op-, dt.y p. 2,

60 Sankara and ramanuja

From the point of view of history rather than of metaphysics,
Ramanuja might be described as one who has carried further
the more purely theistic teaching of the Vedanta Sutras. He
was not at all distressed by the slightly dualistic and realistic
tendency which had set in before the time of Sankara, and from
which the latter represented a reaction. Rather was he inclined
to welcome such a tendency. He would have ranged himself
alongside of Kumarila Bhatta in opposition to the Buddhists,
and, while he would also have sympathized with much of the
anti-ritualistic fervour which placed Sankara in opposition to
Kumarila Bhatta, he was by no means disposed to go all the
way with Sankara in the direction of abstraction. He had much
more regard for the ordinary religious needs of humanity, and
was unwilling to patronize the populace by allowing them
graciously to occupy a lower station while a higher one was
reserved for the true philosopher. He held that religious satis¬
faction and metaphysical validity might coincide, and that the
air of the highest heights to which the philosopher might aspire
was not too rarified for common men to breathe. If the common
man still had to be selected from a somewhat restricted class,
this disability might be put down to traditional caste-necessity
and not to intrinsic intellectual or spiritual inferiority.

Ramanuja’s period was the end of the eleventh century and
the beginning of the twelfth. He was born at Sri-perumbudur,
near Madras, and, after a youth of extraordinary precocity, he
became the Acharya, or spiritual leader connected with the
temple at Srirangam, near Trichinopoly, and at the same time
occupied the position of Acharya of the Sri-Vaishnava sect, the
greatest of all the Vaishnava sects. It is said that his domestic
life was not particularly happy, and he suffered much from
sectarian persecution. He seems from the first to have adopted
a more liberal attitude towards non-Brahman castes than did
some of his predecessors. He indeed restricted the reading of
the Vedas to the ‘twice-born’, but he was willing to communi¬
cate his religious teaching even to Sudras and outcastes. The
story is told of him that with great difficulty he persuaded a
certain guru to unlock for him the secrets of the esoteric
mysteries, under promise that these secrets would not be pub¬
lished except to a worthy disciple who had been properly tested.

LIFE AND TEACHING OF RAMANUJA 61

Ramanuja, however, found that the doctrines were so impor¬
tant and so vital for salvation, that for the sake of the general
good he preferred himself to become a castaway if by any means
—even by the breaking of a promise—he could save some.
When the Guru in the vehemence of wrath threatened him with
eternal punishment hereafter, Ramanuja replied that he would
gladly suffer hell himself if he could bring a message of salvation
to the suffering people.

He represented to a considerable extent the tendency or
thought manifested in the Puranas. He was an adherent
further of the Vaishnava religion in which great stress was laid
on the bhakti attitude to the divine. Within the confines of this
sect Ramanuja entered into a kind of apostolical succession.
Amongst its leaders at an earlier period was a special group of
devotees called Alvars, who were renowned for their religious
hymns and honoured as saints almost on the threshold of
divinity. They laid special stress on the central tenet of bhakti ,
and, while holding no official place in the sect, were exceedingly
influential by reason of the nobility and_purity of their lives.
These were succeeded by a group called Acharyas, regarded as
perhaps less fully inspired, but still greatly venerated. They
exercised a considerable amount of authority over the sect, and
performed certain priestly functions. Of these Ramanuja was
said to be the fifth in succession.

But, notwithstanding the strength of traditional influence,
Ramanuja’s acceptance of the views he ultimately held was the
result of conscious choice following upon controversy, and was
not merely mechanical. At Conjeeveram he studied for some
time under Yadavaprakasa, a teacher of the school of Sankara,
and Ramanuja’s adherence to a modified form of monism was
the result of repeated study of the pure monism of his guru.
Much travelling in search of instruction had the effect of
strengthening him in his views, and finally he felt himself
qualified to succeed Alavandar, his immediate predecessor in
the list of Acharyas—at the famous temple of Srirangam. This
place continued to be his head-quarters, except when driven
into exile by reason of Saiva persecution, and during one long
journey which he undertook for the spreading of his doctrines.
His long life came to an end in 1137.

6 z ^ANKARA AND RAMANUJA

By his energy he consolidated the sect to which he belonged
and left a powerful organization behind him. But his theoretical
consolidation was of much greater importance than his institu¬
tional, for in his Srlbhashya he gave to his sect a supporting
philosophy, and at the same time, seeing that he commented on
such important documents as the Vedanta Sutras , traced that
philosophy back to the traditional Vedanta sources. The twin
principles of bhakti and vidya which Ramanuja followed
strikingly indicate his close connexion both with the popular
polytheistic and theistic religion on the one hand and also with
central philosophical tendencies on the other. These principles,
moreover, interact with each other in his system to their mutual
advantage. The intensely emotional fervour associated with
bhakti, as, e.g., in the Bhagavata Purana, was never adopted by
Ramanuja, and his bhakti is of a much more moderate type.
On the other hand the coldly philosophical meditations of
thinkers such as Sankara are humanized and diverted from the
abstract to the concrete.

With such a tradition and in such an environment it was to
be expected that Ramanuja would not be able to approve of
Sankara’s doctrine of two orders of knowledge which compelled
the seeker to go beyond a Divine Being who could attract the
human heart and fill it with devotion, and search for an abstract
unqualified Absolute. For Ramanuja there was not a higher
and a lower Brahman, but the so-called ‘lower’ Brahman was
himself the ultimate, compact of auspicious qualities. The
favourite assertion of the monists that here there ‘was no
diversity’ was simply meant, according to Ramanuja, to imply
the unification of the attributes (which were incapable of ulti¬
mately detached existence) and the denial of any source of
power other than Brahman. Creation is real and not a merely
illusory activity. To three entities reality must always be
allowed—to God, the individual souls, and non-intelligent
matter. To God two stages of existence must be assigned. In
the pralaya state of absolute quiescence souls and matter exist
in Him in subtle form. At creation, again, they come forth into
visible expression, and creation is the result of a positive
volitional effort on the part of Brahman, who pervades the
universe in which he expresses himself and in relation to whom

LIFE AND TEACHING OF RAMANUJA 63

all living creatures exist as modes (prakara ). The individual
soul is not essentially one with Brahman in the sense that it has
no present freedom and is bound eventually to lose its individua¬
lity. Rather does it become one with Brahman merely in the
sense of acquiring the divine qualities, and its destiny, when it
is released, through steady devotion and contemplation and by
the gift of the grace of God, from the trammels of transmigra¬
tion, is to enjoy communion in paradise with the personal Lord
of all. The general character of Ramanuja’s conception of God
was such that it was possible for him, without intellectual con¬
tradiction, to identify Brahman with Vishnu, the God of the
Vaishnavas, and at the same time to claim that the worship of
Vishnu was a direct fulfilment of the teaching of the Vedanta
textsj and the religious counterpart of the only tenable philo¬
sophical position. Ramanuja’s work had considerable influence
upon subsequent religious development and gave to the faith
of the Vaishnavas a stability and dignity which it did not
previously possess. 1

Sankara’s philosophy is known as Advaita (non-dualism), and
Ramanuja’s as Visishtadvaita (modified non-dualism), and it
will be obvious from the short account we have given of the
tenets of the two philosophers that the qualifying adjective
indicates a very vital difference. That the second of the pro¬
tagonists was himself vividly conscious of the difference is
evident from the quotation we have already given from Rama¬
nuja’s own polemical writings. The intensity of opposition has
not diminished in the course of the centuries, as is indicated by
a saying recently attributed to a leader of one of the schools of
thought in southern India, which is dominated by the Visisht¬
advaita doctrine He is represented as declaring that he had
rather see all India abandoning Hinduism altogether than that
‘it should fall a prey to the Vedanta of Sankara’. 2 It will there¬
fore be readily understood how difficult it is in any exposition
of the Vedanta to include as equally important data the teach¬
ings of both Sankara and Ramanuja. As Max Muller says, ‘It
must be admitted that in India, instead of one Vedanta philo-

1 We may note especially his influence on the doctrines of the Satwata
school, as these are set forth by Prof. Bhagavat Kumar Shastri in his book
upon The Bhakti Cult in Ancient India. Cf. pp. 173 ff.

^Quoted in Frazer’s Indian Thought } 72.

64 Sankara and rAmanuja

sophy, we have really two, springing from the same root but
extending its branches in two very different directions, that of
Sankara being kept for unflinching reasoners who, supported
by an unwavering faith in Monism, do not shrink from any of
its consequences, . . . another, that of Ramanuja, trying hard
to reconcile their Monism with the demands of the human
heart that required, and always will require, a personal God, as
the last cause of all that is, and an eternal soul that yearns for
an approach to or a reunion with that Being. 51

It is therefore necessary to inquire which of the two philo¬
sophers is accepted as the typical Vedantist by Indian thinkers,
and to what extent the popular verdict reflects a recognition of
continuity between the favoured teaching on the one hand and
the teaching of the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras on the
other. If we can prove that one of the two rival commentators
is clearly outstanding, the simplest procedure in our subsequent
exposition will be to adopt as a basis the teaching accepted by
the majority, and use the other as a starting-point for lines of
criticism.

There can be little doubt that pre-eminence must be assigned
to Sankara. So far as counting of heads goes, it has been
estimated even by a follower of Ramanuja that out of the total
number of Vedantins 75 per cent, are adherents of Sankara, and
only 15 per cent, of Ramanuja, while the remaining 10 per cent,
may be distributed amongst minor sects also laying claim to the
name of Vedantins. And that this popularity is not merely
accidental, but is based upon and justified by a considered
estimate of the significance of Sankara’s teaching, is evidenced
by the opinion of leading scholars, even down to the present
day. In their opinion the triumph of Vedantic ideas is due
fundamentally to the work of Sankara. Tt was given to San¬
kara 5 , says Mr. C. N. Krishnaswami Aiyar, ‘to make Vedanta
the basis of every religious sect that India has known, so as to
satisfy the needs of men of all shades of intelligence and bias. 5 z
And Mr. D. N. Pal, after citing a long list of appreciations of
Vedantism to be found in the writings of European scholars,
exclaims, ‘All this is due to Sankara. Without his master mind,
this grand thing remained inconceivable. 5 3 Mr. P. N. Sen

1 Muller, S. S. 192. 2 Aiyar, 9. 3 Pal, 141*

THE TEACHING OF SANKARA 65

holds that 'the philosophy of Sankara has now been unalterably
identified with the Vedanta philosophy’. 1 Prof. S. N. Das
Gupta writes in much the same strain, 'Whenever we speak
of the Vedanta philosophy, we mean the philosophy that was
expounded by Sankara,’ 2 and he claims also that the popularity
of the philosophy is based on the intrinsic merit of 'the subtle
and deep ideas it contains’. Dr. Thibaut takes the £ankara-bha~
shya to represent the orthodox side of Brahmanical theology and
describes the doctrine advocated by Sankara as 'the most im¬
portant and interesting which has arisen on Indian soil; neither
those forms of the Vedanta which diverge from the view repre¬
sented by Sankara nor any of the non-Vedantic systems can be
compared with the so-called orthodox Vedanta in boldness,
depth, and subtlety of speculation’. 3

Having established the centrality of Sankara himself in popu¬
lar and scholarly estimation, it now remains for us to ask
whether he can serve himself heir to the fundamental ideas of
his authorities, i.e. whether he can by right of succession be
called orthodox. To what extent is he a reliable interpreter of
the Upanishads and of the Sutras} Although both he and
Ramanuja represent philosophical tendencies divergent alike
from the Upanishads and the Sutras, and although—to borrow
a metaphor from Max Muller—they both are citizens of philo¬
sophical colonies which have detached themselves to some
extent from the mother-country, yet on the whole neither of
them is so individualistic as to neglect the obvious strengthening
of their respective positions which would come from a properly
established connexion with the ancient authorities. They shared
the universally accepted view that no system could be regarded
as having sufficient standing if it could be shown to be in
opposition to the tradition of ancient thought. It has already
been shown, however, that we cannot assert any simple identifi¬
cation between the doctrines of the Upanishads and of the
Sutras , and therefore we cannot expect that the attitude of
Sankara and Ramanuja, whether divergent from each other or
not, will be exactly the same in regard to the Sutras as in regard
to the Upanishads. It may turn out that Sankara is the more

3 Das Gupta, I. 429.

3 S. B. E. XXXIV, p. xiv.

F .

1 Sen, 5.

66 SANKARA AND RAMANUJA

faithful interpreter of the Upanishads and Ramanuja of the

Sutras , or vice versa.

There are one or two a priori considerations which may throw
some light upon the problem. Sankara, e.g., is disposed to treat
the Sutras as of much less importance than the Upanishads.
He assigns, as we have seen, to the former merely ‘the purpose
of stringing together the flowers of the Vedanta passages’. 1
Consequently, if any conflict should arise between the Sutras
and the Upanishads, Sankara will feel bound to accept the
teaching of the latter rather than of the former, and will, on the
other hand, feel more at liberty to transform the primary mean¬
ing of the Sutras. IVforeover, Sankara took a much stricter view
than Ramanuja of the authority of the Upanishads. His attitude
is predominantly one of submission leaving little room for free¬
dom. In his comment on I. r. 2 he indeed allows that, while
supreme reverence is to be paid to the Vedanta texts, yet the
knowledge derived from them may be supplemented by in¬
tuition which ‘may be had recourse to according to the occa¬
sion’., Inference also may be regarded as ‘an instrument of
right knowledge in so far as it does not contradict the Vedanta
texts’. But in reference to I. r. 11 he takes up the more uncom¬
promising position that ‘Reasoning which disregards the holy
texts and rests on individual opinion only, has no proper founda¬
tion. . . . The true nature of the cause of the world cannot. . .
even be thought of without the help of the holy texts.’

We shall return a little later to Sankara’s general conception
of the place of authority, but in the meantime it may be noted
that in relation especially to the Upanishads his attitude will
lead us to expect an exceedingly careful rendering of what he
takps to be their meaning. On the other hand, we may note that
Ramanuja adopts a much freer attitude to the Upanishads, and
lays down the general principle that, when perception and
Scripture come into conflict, Scripture is not necessarily to be
regarded as the more authoritative. 2 As a consequence of this
we may ve^y naturally form the expectation that in any cases of
variance between the Upanishads and the Sutras, Ramanuja will
feel more at liberty to follow the plain meaning of the Sutras.

1 Cf. Commentary on Sutra I. r. 2, S. B.E. XXXIV. 17.

* Cf. S.B.E. XLVIII. 73.

THE TEACHING OF SANKARA 67

Another a priori consideration has reference to the distribu¬
tion of the contents of the Sutras . By far the larger portion of
them deals with topics which, according to Sankara’s principles,
are of secondary importance. He will therefore be compelled to
concentrate his attention upon what in respect of bulk is a minor
portion, and, contrariwise, will be disposed to treat the major
portion with considerable freedom and subject it to a method
of interpretation which will detract from the importance it
might have had on a plain rendering. He will have to expend
a good deal of effort in order to extract from it a secondary
meaning more in accordance with the import of the minor
portion. It is, of course, possible that this secondary meaning
will be the essential meaning, but the probabilities are the other
way, and a priori we shall be disposed to attribute the greater
accuracy to the simpler interpretation. The right to adopt an
esoteric point of view must always be somewhat reluctantly
conceded unless on other grounds it can be shown that the.
Scriptures in question were intended to have a double meaning.

The question of the affiliation of Sankara’s doctrine to the
Sutras and the Upanishads respectively cannot, however, be
decided on a priori grounds merely, but must depend for settle¬
ment on an investigation of the sources of some of Sankara’s
leading doctrines. Dr. Thibaut has made an elaborate study
of this question, and has selected as points for discussion the
problems of two orders of knowledge, the distinction between
a higher and a lower Brahman, the doctrine of Maya, and the
relation of the individual souls to Brahman. 1 As our main
purpose is expository rather than historical, a brief discussion
of Sankara’s relations to the Sutras and the Upanishads as
revealed in his treatment of these topics is all that is necessary
here.

We have seen that the distinction between ordinary and real
knowledge is at the basis of much of Sankara’s teaching. The
assumption is that statements maybe true from the vyavaharika
or ordinary point of view, but not true from the pafamarthika
or transcendental point of view. If this distinction is recognized

1 The same topics, though not in the same order, have been discussed at
•considerable length in the present writer’s Pantheism and the Value of Life,
193-230.

68 SANKARA AND RAMlNUJA

as fundamental in the Sutra teaching, we should naturally
expect that only he would be regarded as having attained the
highest stage of emancipation who had also attained to the
highest knowledge. But, as a matter of fact, in the fourth
division of the Sutras, a description is given at considerable
length of one who knows Brahman, and yet this description is
declared by Sankara to apply to one who only has the lower
knowledge, and therefore cannot have risen to the level of the
highest attainment possible. If, however, the Sutras had agreed
with his view, it is difficult to understand how they could have
placed such a description in such a setting where we should
naturally have expected a reference to the highest conceivable
state. The Isa Ufianishad I. 9 may seem to be a passage favour¬
able to Sankara’s view. Here it is said that ‘those who delight
in knowledge enter, as it were, into greater darkness , and
Sankara interprets it as indicating a depreciation of those who
possess only the lower knowledge. But its true significance
seems to be that it gives a decision on the point that when a
choice has to be made between knowledge and works, the alter¬
native of knowledge alone is more dangerous than the alternative
of works alone. About all that can be said in reference to
Upanishad support of Sankara’s general distinction is that it
affords a convenient method of arranging the different strata in
their teaching and of dealing with higher and lower material.

It is also difficult to prove that support can be found in the
Sutras for the negative procedure which results in the identifi¬
cation of the individual soul with Brahman. Sankara indeed
argues that individuality is entirely due to nescience, and that
the ‘joining’ which is spoken of in Sutras 1 .1.19 can mean only
identity and nothing else. It is, however, to be noticed that
this interpretation is so far from being regarded as the only
possible one, that Ramanuja, in reference to the same passage,
makes the vigorous comment that ‘To say that any one is
identical with that by which he obtains bliss, would be madness
indeed’. 1 A passage having great significance for this question
is to be found in Sutras II. 3.43, ‘The soul is a part of the Lord,
on account of the declaration of difference.’ In order to bring
this into agreement with his system, Sankara has to insert the
* Cf. 5 . B. E. XLVIII. 236.

THE TEACHING OF SANKARA 69

qualification, ‘a part, as it were? whereas Ramanuja can take the
statement far more simply. Moreover, a slightly earlier Sutra
of the same Pada 1 speaks of the soul as an ‘agent*, thus seeming
to convey an impression of individuality. It would not be
difficult, however, to show that the Upanishads give far greate r
support than the Sutras to Sankara’s denial of in dividualit y.
TTc^^aushliaki Upamshad maintenance
of individuality, but such passages as Brihaddranyaka Upani-
shad I. 4. 19, ‘From death to death goes he who sees plurality
anywhere/ tell strongly in the opposite direction. Still more
convincing is the consideration that the prevailing tendency of
the Upanishads is in the direction of regarding the association
of Brahman with plurality simply as a concession to the weakness
of the empirical consciousness.'and of insisting that theJinal
state is one of complete identifica tion of the individual soul w ith
Bralimam

The situation is very much the same in regard to Sankara’s
distinction between the sagunam and nirgunam Brahman. This
distinction does not seem to be supported by the Sutras . They
persist in ascribing one quality after another to Brahman, and
they put the inquiry into Brahman as ‘an ocean of auspicious
qualities ’ in the very forefront of their endeavour. This, to say
the least of it, would be a slightly curious and futile proceeding,
if the Sutrakara indeed considered that the Brahman of qualities
was not the highest from his point of view, even though it might
not be the highest in the sense of the word ‘highest’ accepted by
Sankara. But Sankara argues that, though it must be admitted
that there are passages in the Upanishads which might very
naturally be construed as referring to a qualitative Brahman,
yet these very passages are contradicted by passages which come
later; and, as a contradiction must always follow that which is
contradicted, these later passages must be taken as more
authoritative than the earlier. A criterion based upon the order
of the passages is, however, of doubtful validity, and, in any
case, if rigorously applied, the criterion would not always tell in
favour of Sankara.3 At the same time Sankara is in the main
justified in regard to the Upanishads. Although they do not

1 II. 3. 33. 2 Cf. especially II. 15.

3 Cf. the present writer’s Pantheism and the Value of Life, p. 198.

70 Sankara and ramanuja

make any formal and explicit distinction between the qualitative
and non-qualitative Brahman, yet their general tendency is in
a negative direction and towards a Brahman of abstract charac¬
ter, in regard to which they can make use of only the vaguest
predicates or of none at all. On the whole it would be correct
to say that they show a distrust of any categories drawn from
ordinary experience.

In regard to the relation of God to the world, we have to ask
whether the Sutras support Sankara’s view of Maya as a purely
negative illusion. This question is bound up with the one we
have just been considering, as, if a qualitative Brahman is to be
regarded as the ultimate object of belief in the Sutras, obviously
Sankara’s position which degrades such a qualitative Brahman
to the level of the first product of Maya is attacked at the
very foundation. We are the more inclined to believe that
Sankara has difficulty in deriving support for his doctrine from
the Sutras , because of the frequency with* which he begs the
question. He puts his opponents out of court and brushes their
arguments aside on the ground that these are statements regard¬
ing a merely supposed reality and therefore worthless. Now
when a man consistently refuses to take the statements of his
opponents at their face value in their intention, the probability
is that this face value is not very favourable to him. And a study
of the Sutras would seem to bear out the view that Sankara is
wise in not making any very direct appeal to them. One of their
fundamental positions is that God is not only the originating
but also the material cause of the world, in which case it is
obvious that the effect would partake of the reality of the cause.
A minor consideration is that Sankara himself seems sometimes,
and especially in the heat of his conflict with the Buddhists, to
accept the distinction made in the Sutras, without seeking to
minimize it or explain it away. In reference to Sutra III. 2. 3 he
emphasizes the distinction between the dream-world and the
waking world, and the contention that the dream-world, as
being Maya, is different from the actual waking world—from
which it would surely follow that the actual world is not Maya.
Sankara, as has been said, temporarily accepts this conclusion.

As regards the Upanishads, it may be said that the Maya
doctrine certainly does not appear in any explicit form in the

THE TEACHING OF SANKARA 71

earlier Upanishads, and there is a good deal to support the
position that on the whole they favour a realistic interpretation
of the universe. But at the same time it must be admitted that
the Maya doctrine is present in germ and that its further
development is thoroughly natural and almost inevitable. It is
really the result of a desire—pressed indeed to its uttermost—
for a philosophical unity of the most rigorous kind. If the con¬
tention has been accepted that nothing is apart from Brahman,
and, if it is found difficult to reconcile the plurality with the
unity, rigorous logic would seem to demand the denial of the
plurality. It probably would not be too much to say that
the general teaching of the Upanishads was in favour of such
a demand.

Thus we seem to ha\ e reached the position that, in respect of
the chief parts of his doctrine, Sankara is not a very faithful
interpreter of the Sutras, but that on the whole he reproduces
and carries farther the main tendencies of the Upanishads.
This is very much the position taken up by Thibaut, who has
devoted much careful consideration to the problem; and he is
supported on both counts by the majority of scholars. Gough,
e.g., says that ‘the teaching of Sankara is the natural and legiti¬
mate interpretation of the philosophy of the Upanishads’, 1 and
in reference to the Sutras Max Muller says that ‘Sankara’s
philosophy, with its unflinching monism, is his own rather than
Badarayana’s’. 2 Jacobi 3 says that Sankara does violence to the
sense of the Sutras but is nearer to the Upanishads. Garbe 4
takes the opposite view and holds that it is Ramanuja who
‘introduces into Badarayana’s treatise views which are alien to
the true Vedantic doctrine’; and he asserts that of the Indian
adherents of the Vedanta, ‘three-fourths accept Sankara’s inter¬
pretation of the Brahmasutras Facts hardly bear out this
statement. Garbe seems almost to regard the Brahma Sutras and
the Upanishads as agreeing on all important points, which is
very far from being the case. The truer position would seem to
be that while three-fourths of the Vedantists would agree in
regarding Sankara as a typical Vedantist, they are not in the

1 Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads , p. vii.

z Muller, S. S. 117. 3 Das Licht vom Osten, 50.

4 E, R. E. XII. 597.

72 Sankara and ramanuja

majority of cases willing to allow that he is a faithful interpreter
of the Sutras.

Indeed, Indian writers are not quite so ready as Deussen and
Gough to agree even that Sankara is altogether reliable as an
interpreter of the Upanishads. Prof. Radhakrishnan, e.g., takes
up an exceedingly cautious attitude on this point; 1 but on the
whole in this reference they accept him as a pillar of orthodoxy,
and their general attitude would, as we have seen, justify us in
regarding him as the main source of material for the exposition
and estimation of the Vedanta philosophy. But in regard to the
Sutras they are almost all {pace Prof. Garbe) in agreement that
he does not faithfully interpret the Sutras. One notable excep¬
tion, however, is Prof. P. D. Shastri, who calls Sankara ‘the best
and most satisfactory exponent of Badarayana’s views on the
Vedanta problems’. 3 Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, on the other hand,
and more representatively, says, ‘There are two doctrines in¬
dicative of the relation of God to the world, the so-called
Parinamavada and the Vivartavada. The last is the doctrine of
Sankaracharya . . .; while the first is that clearly held by the
author of the Sutras.’ 3 He is supported by Prof. S. N. Das
Gupta, who is ‘inclined to believe that the dualistic interpreta¬
tions of the Brahmasutras were more faithful to the Sutras than
the interpretations of Sankara’. 4

We may then take up generally the position that Sankara re¬
presents a reaction in the direction of the Upanishads and away
from the slightly dualistic tendency manifest in the Sutras', and,
on this understanding, may proceed to our fuller investigation
of Sankara’s views as typical of the Vedanta philosophy. History
to a very considerable extent places him in the position of the
orthodox exponent, although it does not rule out the considera¬
tion of opposing views. And after all, whatever his affiliations
may be, it is with Sankara’s own unfolding of his philosophy
that we have mainly to do; for, as Prof. Das Gupta says,
‘a system in the Sutras is weak and helpless as a new born babe’;
and the Upanishads themselves awaited through the centuries
the coherence of doctrine which only a systematizer could give.

1 Cf. Radhakrishnan, I. 141.
3 Vaishnavisnij p. 160.

a P. D. Shastri, 96.

4 Das Gupta, L 421.

IV

THE APPROACH TO SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACH¬
ING: PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS; HIS CONCEP¬
TION OF AUTHORITY; THE IDEALISTIC ATTITUDE;
HIS RELATION TO BUDDHISM

A CCORDING to Sankara, certain preliminary conditions of
^^philosophic study have to be observed. These are broadly
similar to those we have already noted in connexion with the
Upanishads. For Sankara also the conditions are both external
and internal, i.e. they are either largely beyond our control or
largely within our control. We find that the spirit of esotericism
has persisted even to Sankara’s day, and that of the external
conditions one of the most important is that the aspirant should
belong to the proper class or caste. The Vedanta is essentially
aristocratic. Although its ultimate doctrine is the unity of the
Self with Brahman and the denial of the diversity of things, and
we might suppose that this denial would apply also to the
diverse conditions of human beings, yet from the first this
knowledge is jealously guarded as a privilege of only certain
sections of the population. The rebirth of the soul which the
enlightenment makes possible must have as its counterpart
the external ceremony of rebirth, the upanayana ceremony, the
investiture of the youth with the sacred thread, for which only
the three highest castes are eligible. The Sudras, or lower caste,
are rigorously excluded. The Sudra may need this knowledge
as much as other men, and he may also be capable of it, but still
he must not be allowed the opportunity of acquiring it. 1

This exclusiveness was bound up, as we shall see, with other
external conditions such as the Vedantist dependence on the
authority of the Veda and upon instruction by a teacher, and
we shall discuss these further in connexion with the general
question of the place of authority in the Vedanta. In the mean¬
time it may be noted that this limitation of the reading of the

1 Cf. Sankara’s Commentary on Sutra I. 3. 25 ff., where he discusses the
question as to who are eligible, and lays down the rule that ‘men only of the
three higher castes are . . . not excluded by prohibitions’, and are qualified
by being ‘subject to the precepts about the upanayana ceremony and so on\
Cf, S. B. E. XXXIV. 197, and Colebrooke’s Miscellaneous Essays, I. 223.

74 . SANKARA'S CENTRAL TEACHING

Vedas was supposed to have been broken only in one or two
legendary cases, which were in themselves of doubtful histori¬
city, and which, in any case were of the nature of exceptions
proving the rule rather than contradicting it. Sankara himself
explicitly accepts the injunction that the Yedas were never to be
read in the presence of a Sudra, with the consequence that the
knowledge derivable only from the Vedas was a privilege to
which the lowest class could not aspire. He states that The
mere circumstance of being in a condition of desire does not
furnish a reason for qualification if capability is absent. Mere
temporal capability again does not constitute a reason for quali¬
fication, spiritual qualification being required in spiritual
matters.' 1 And spiritual qualification he defines in the same
paragraph as meaning simply not being excluded from the
reading of the Vedas. Further he quotes with seeming ac¬
ceptance the stern Vedic prescription that The ears of him who
hears the Veda are to be filled with molten lead and lac, “For
the Sudra is (like) a cemetery, therefore (the Veda) is not to be
read in the vicinity of a Sudra'' '?

It is more pleasant and more just, however, to turn from these
external restrictions to the internal conditions which Sankara
lays down. The importance of these is indicated in the very first
Sutra, 'Then, therefore the enquiry into Brahman', especially
by the word 'Then'. According to Sankara, 'then' does not at
all refer to a preliminary acquaintance with, or performance of,
religious works. These, as we shall see later, have only ascetic
or propaedeutic value, and do not of themselves bring about
any abiding result. The true conditions are purely spiritual, and
are enumerated by Sankara as follows: (i) discrimination of
what is eternal and what is non-eternal; (2) renunciation of
desire for reward both here and hereafter; (3) the attainment
of the six means—tranquillity, restraint, renunciation of re¬
ligious ceremonies, patience, concentration, belief; (4) the
longing for liberation.

A study of these conditions reveals a very pure and elevated
conception of the philosophic spirit. There must be as a pre¬
liminary a generally philosophical attitude, a readiness to dis¬
tinguish between the changing and the permanent. There must
1 Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV. 224. 3 lb. 228.

PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS 75

be a singleness of aim and no mingling of material ambitions
with the pure pursuit after truth. There must be an abandon¬
ment of the sceptical spirit, not to the extent of being the victim
of obstructive dogmatism or being unwilling to investigate all
problems, but to the extent of being willing to believe that
investigation can bring about a result, which result must be
viewed in an other-worldly, ascetic rather than humanistic,
spirit, properly described by the phrase, ‘longing for liberation’.
The ‘six means’ indicate the prevailing state of the mind of the
true philosopher. He must be entirely independent of external
ceremonies, and patient—to a greater extent even than Aristotle
would demand—of the vicissitudes of fortune. He must have
his senses wholly under control, and have acquired a Stoic calm.
Above all he must be capable of, and practise, concentration—
passive to the extent of a recognition that the knowledge of
Brahman ‘does not depend on human energy’, but active in the
sense that for him concentration means the gathering up of the
highest human powers and requires a persistent holding of
the divine unity before the mind. Concentration must be care¬
fully distinguished from mere sluggishness of mind. This
mixture of the passive and the active attitude is strikingly antici-
pative of Spinoza, and it may be noted in passing that Rama¬
nuja in a similar spirit defines meditation as ‘steady remem¬
brance’. 1

Given, then, this spiritual attitude of mind, how does the
inquirer proceed ? Is there any assistance from human—or,
perhaps from Divine—sources available for him in his quest
after God? Will he have to depend on his own resources
entirely, or are there authorities which may, nay must, help him?
This brings us to the general question of the importance
ascribed in the Vedanta to authority .

The Place of Authority in the Vedanta

We have seen that Sankara took up a fairly submissive
attitude in regard to the authority of the Upanishad texts. He
considered that he was bound to show the agreement of his
main doctrines with these texts. It might turn out that there
was agreement also with experience and reason, but such
x Cf. S. B. E. XLVIII. 11.

76 Sankara’S central teaching

subordinate agreement would be only a consequence of the
truth of the doctrine, and neither experience nor reason could
be regarded as in any important sense the sources of the
doctrine. The ultimate source must lie in authority, reason
being given a merely supplementary place and allowed to have
validity only ‘in so far as it does not contradict the Vedanta
texts’, 1 and in so far as it deals with comparatively minor con¬
siderations. 2, According to Sankara, only perfect knowledge can
give release; and perfect knowledge, just because it deals with
permanent things and wins universal acceptance, cannot be
dependent on mere reasoning. He says in his Commentary on
Sutra I. x—11, ‘As the thoughts of men are altogether unfettered,
reasoning which disregards the holy texts, and rests on in¬
dividual opinion only, has no proper foundation.’ And again,
‘On account of the diversity of men’s opinions, it is impossible
to accept mere reasoning as having a sure foundation.’ 3

Now there has been a tendency both in ancient and modern
times for searchers after truth to turn away in disgust from the
conflict of opinions and the jarring noises of controversy, and to
seek for the region where ‘beyond these voices there is peace’;
but Sankara goes farther than most, and asserts in a positive
manner that from the nature of the case the highest truth must
rest upon authority. In his Commentary on I. 8. 4 we read,
‘The fact of everything having its Self in Brahman cannot be
grasped without the aid of the Scriptural passage, “That art
Thou”.’ 4 And in I. 8. 11 we read further, ‘The true nature of
the cause of the world upon which final emancipation depends,
cannot, on account of its abstruseness, even be thought of with¬
out the help of the holy texts; for . . . it cannot become the
object of perception because it does not possess qualities such
as form and the like, and, as it is devoid of characteristic signs,
it does not lend itself to inference and the other means of right
knowledge /5 He quotes with approval Kathaka Upanishad I.
2. 9, ‘That doctrine is not to be obtained by argument, but
when it is declared by another, then it is easy to understand’. 6
We must reject the ordinary means of proof which rest on

1 Cf. Sutra I. 1.2.

3 Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV. 315.
s Ib. 316.

2 Cf. Deussen, 95.
4 Cf. Ib. 23.

6 Ib. 307.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY 77

perception and inference; or, if we still retain these psycho¬
logical terms, we must sublimate them. Perception may be
transformed into a kind of mystical intuition, similar to sense-
perception in its directness; or the two terms may be used in
conjunction as indicating the two divisions of the sacred canon,
viz. sruti and smnti, ‘hearing’ and ‘remembrance’. According
to Sankara’s most usual practice, the first division is equivalent
to the older Upanishads, and the second to the Bhagavadgita.

The sacred texts not only serve the central purpose of re¬
ligious enlightenment, but have also a more comprehensive
usefulness. Even what we should now regard as details of
scientific knowledge may be believed on the basis of Scripture. 1
Practical guidance also may be derived from them. In con¬
nexion with III. 1. 26 it is stated that ‘the knowledge of an
action being right is based on Scripture only’.

Finally, it should be noticed that Sankara does not indulge in
any elaborate argument in order to establish the authoritative-
ness of the Scriptures; he simply accepts this as something
which cannot be gainsaid. ‘Nor can the authoritativeness of
the texts’, he says, ‘be proved by inferential reasoning; so that
it would be dependent on instances observed elsewhere.’ 3

It has long been the practice of older writers on the Vedanta
to lay almost excessive emphasis upon Sankara’s implicit re¬
liance upon authority. They compare him with the scholastics
of Europe, and visit him with the contempt which is frequently
meted out to such dim-minded medievalists as some of them
were. Muir, e.g., speaks of Sankara’s method in a rather lofty
manner: ‘These arguments are not likely to seem convincing to
any persons but the adherents of the schools from which they
have severally emanated. The European student can only look
upon these opinions as matters of historical interest, as illustra¬
tions of the course of religious thought among a highly acute
and speculative people .’3 A more modern writer to a certain
extent redresses the balance by drawing the parallel with the
scholastics simply and without depreciation: ‘As Sankara argues
with his opponents, his position resembles that of a Scholastic

* Cf. Commentary on II. 3.10, S. B. E. XXXVIII. 22, where we are told
about the production of water from fire.

■* s. B, E. XXXIV. 23. 3 Sanskrit Texts, III. 209,

7 8 ■ SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

philosopher in medieval Europe. Each believed that he had an
infallible authority behind him with which the results of specu¬
lative inquiry must be harmonized. The Christian teacher
might start from Aristotle, but he must end with Scripture and
the Church. The Hindu might use the methods of reasoning as
freely as the Greek, but he must bring their issue into accord
with the Veda/ 1

At the same time it must be admitted that Sankara’s apparent
abdication of private judgement, his reliance on instruction
imparted by another, and his abhorrence of unfettered thought,
are disconcertingly suggestive of the narrowness of European
medieval philosophy, and seem to place a deep chasm between
Vedantic and modern speculation. It would seem at first sight
almost impossible to treat as serious philosophy a system which
submitted thus tamely to bondage, and it is therefore a matter
of considerable importance to inquire whether the bondage is
really so complete as might appear on the surface. This is all
the more necessary because modern Indian writers are perfectly
well aware of the requirements of the philosophic spirit; and,
unless we are irresistibly compelled by facts, it would be unfair
to bind upon them an inheritance which would limit their
speculative freedom. Prof. Radhakrishnan, e.g., in the course
of his treatment of the philosophy of the Bhagavadgita, is
responsible for the dictum that ‘a half-truth won for ourselves
is worth more than a whole truth learned from others’. 3 And
in general it may be said that his fellow countrymen are also
more or less conscious of the contradiction between the exercise
of the philosophic spirit and implicit obedience to authority.
Because of loyalty to the spirit of investigation they desire to be
free; and yet, if they continue to be loyal also to the tradition of
reliance upon Scripture, they would appear to be in bondage.
What then can be said of the tradition itself, so far as Sankara is
concerned ? Was he with his followers merely a scholastic ad¬
herent of philosophic maxims handed down to them by teachers,
or did their adherence to Scriptural authority arise from a
deeper motive and one less embarrassing to the freedom of
speculative inquiry ?

It is, of course, impossible anywhere to get away entirely from
1 Carpenter, 310. V Radhakrishnan, I. 553.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY 79

authority, just as impossible as it is to cut oneself altogether
loose from one's own past, and there is much truth in what was said
of Edward Caird, 'The more original a man, the more heavy the
tribute he exacts from the world and the more intimate his
dependence. He cannot go before it; he can only set free its
significance.' Further, if the reality of the universe is revealing
itself to men through the growing knowledge of humanity, we
are always at liberty to ask the question whether this revelation
is direct or indirect; is it made to each individual afresh or may
we not also rely upon the accumulated knowledge handed down
by tradition ? And the indirect, massed knowledge may come to
us in the form of authority. The general consideration may also
be premised that nominal or formal submission to authority has
often coexisted with actual speculative freedom, which is left
unhindered in practice so long as the authority is not challenged.
A recent writer in the Hibbert Journal , 1 e.g., has pointed out—
with what justification we shall not presume to say—that the
official prescription of doctrinal uniformity in the Roman
Catholic Church became obviously restrictive only on the
emergence of Modernist doctrines. It is probably true that the
demand for credal uniformity became more stringent in India
as the result of a reaction from Buddhism, and therefore did not
represent a permanently paralysing limitation of thought.

Further, in attempting to estimate the fettering effect of
authority we have always to keep in mind the degree of ac¬
customedness or naturalness which has been induced. Fetters
which have been worn for a long time do not interfere with
freedom to the same extent as when they were first imposed;
and, further, the liberty of the individual does not seem to be,
and is actually not so severely circumscribed when the im¬
position of restrictions arises gradually and naturally from a
particular kind of environment. Under such circumstances the
irksomeness and feeling of restraint—which subjective effects
are all-important in connexion with philosophic independence
—seem appreciably lessened, although, of course, we would not
go so far as to say that a man who has been a long time in prison,
or who is surrounded by others similarly confined, is in the same
condition objectively as one who is free.

1 October 1925.

80 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

It has been already pointed out 1 that the course of philo¬
sophic development in India was different from that of Western
philosophy; that in the West one system succeeded another or
was built on destructive criticism of the former, whereas in
India the same system persisted through the centuries; the
main lines of thought were prescribed by tradition; and develop¬
ment could consist only in the interpretation and re-interpreta-
tion of existing authorities. The Sutra literature was taken to be
typical of the whole. Because of their succinctness, they were
unintelligible except to the initiated, and were thus esoteric in
their effect and marked the power of authority, while, just
because of their unintelligibility, they left room for considerable
variety of interpretation and freedom of manipulation. In India
it was perhaps truer than of any other land that a great philo¬
sopher could not go before the thought-tradition which he had
inherited but could only set free its significance.

It might also be useful to draw further attention at this point
to the great emphasis which, in the development of Indian
thought, is placed upon instruction by a Guru or teacher. We
have already noticed Sankara’s approving quotation from the
Kdthaka Upanishad I. 2. 9, 3 and the same thought reappears in
the Chhandogya Upanishad VII. 25, ‘One who does not attend
on a teacher, does not believe’. There is a considerable develop¬
ment in the degree of importance assigned to the teacher, and
the growing insistence upon the necessity of such assistance
may have been due to Brahmanic influence. But whether this
latter cause was operative or not, it is the case that long before
Sankara’s day the presence of a teacher had become the recog¬
nized background of Indian thought. The dramatic setting of
the Upanishads is largely constituted by the search for a teacher
who will reveal the deepest mysteries; and, when he has been
found, unbounded devotion and the most minute practical
service is demanded of the pupil. The persistence of the
attitude may be traced even to the present day . A recent Indian
writer thus speaks in reference to the highest knowledge, ‘The
sole source of this knowledge is a clear and accurate under¬
standing of the Vedic text,“Tl^at thou art”; but, however much
one may analyse its meaning by means of his own reason or with
1 p. 9. 2 p. 76.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY 81

the aid of commentaries, the direct realization of the self cannot
take place unless the Yedic text in question reaches the student
through the mouth of a spiritual teacher. 51 And in the course of
the development and as a result of it, devotion to truth and
devotion to the Guru become almost synonymous. The latter
comes to be regarded as well advanced on the way to deification;
his personal authority is thus enhanced, and the principle of
authority becomes more and more deeply engrained in the
mental attitude of the Indian seeker after truth.

Whether this is altogether advantageous or not has been very
seriously questioned. One writer speaks thus of the reverence
for the Guru : Tt is a training not in self-reliance and inde¬
pendence of judgement, but in subservience to authority and
reverence for what is established, just because it is established. 5 *
An Indian writer is even more emphatic as regards the effect
upon the consciousness of the people. Mr. D. N. Pal says,
‘They had lost the power of independent judgement long ago—
they had left it in the hands of the Brahman from time im¬
memorial; and the result we all know to our cost 5 .3

But whether desirable or not, the attitude spread to the whole
environment. We have already noted Sankara’s acceptance of
the principle that morality may be a matter of prescription, and
this idea is deeply rooted in the life of the people. It is implied
in their conception of dharma. A recent writer says, ‘The idea
of dharma is, like the Roman pie to, very closely bound up with
the details as well as with the general spirit of a man’s daily life
and conduct as a member of the family or caste group. As a rule
his duty is so clearly indicated by custom that he can be in no
doubt about it.’ And again, ‘Actions are not right or wrong in
their nature but only as they conform, or fail to conform, to
a standard of propriety set up by general consent.’ 4

We thus see that authority is not something abruptly and
obtrusively imposed upon a man from without, but something
which almost imperceptibly emerges from, and gathers up, the
spirit of the whole environment. The pressure of it upon the
individual is thus softened by its exceeding naturalness. In

1 Venkataramanan, * Sankara’s Philosophy of Samsara in Three Great
Acharyas , p. in.

2 McKenzie, Hindu Ethics, 50. 3 Pal, 65.**

4 Margaret M. Urquhart, JFbmtf/z of Bengal^ 33 and 57,

G ' '

82 Sankara’S central teaching

addition to this it is modified by certain tendencies towards
valuation which save it from being merely a blind submission to
detailed prescriptions having authority just because they were
traditional. The ancient seers were considered to be worthy of
respect, not simply because they were old but because of their
pre-eminent merits, and for the reason that it was at least con¬
ceivable that men of former ages might have been capable of
more direct intuition of God than was possible for their descen¬
dants of a later day. Sankara explicitly takes this view, ‘What
is for us imperceptible was perceptible for the ancients: thus it
is recorded that Vyasa and others used to meet the Gods and
Rishis face to face. ... We must therefore believe that the
ancients, in consequence of pre-eminent merits, held visible
converse with Gods and Rishis.’ 1 There is here at least a
suggestion of a transition from the conception of the authority
of age to that of the authority of the specialist in religion. There
is further a recognition of an inherent satisfactoriness in the
contents of the texts. They shine by their own light and have
independent authority by reason of the character of their con¬
tents. They are convincing by their intrinsic value. 1

Now it is but a short step from subjective satisfaction to
evaluation on a metaphysical and more objective basis. The
Vedanta passages come to have value, not merely as authorities,
but because they have for their objects ‘firmly established
thin gs’. Their fundamental aim is ‘not to alter existing things
but to make them appear as they are’. 3 But the real is the
permanent, and the next very closely connected movement of
thought is to the idea that the Scriptures, just because they deal
with reality and therefore with the eternal, must themselves be
eternal. They cannot be the work of a personal author; and
their validity must be recognized by raising them above any
phenomenal changes and placing them on the level of the nou-
menal which is independent of change. This conception of the
eternity of the Vedas is supported by repeated discussions of
the eternity of the words of which they are composed and even

1 Quoted by Deussen, $. V. 38.

3 Of. ‘The passages of Scripture about the negation of all difference have
a meaning which leaves nothing more to be wished for.’ S.B.E. XXXVIII,
395 -

3 Cf. Commentary on Prasna U. VI. 3.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY

83

of the sounds which the words indicate. There is alleged to be
a natural and not merely conventional relation between words
and that which they signify; words have an intrinsic denotation
which is the essence of their authority. 1

Further, words themselves acquire deeper metaphysical signi¬
ficance when, on the ground that they are injunctive (i.e. com¬
manding things to be done) or that they are purposive (indicating
plans of action), they are allied with the idea of creativeness.
Prof. Paterson in his recent book refers to the early association
of word with creative energy, ‘The oral rite was felt to be highly
charged with mysterious energy.' ‘ The uttered “must”,’ as
Marett observes, ‘is the very type of spiritual projectile, for
nothing indicates an imperative more clearly, cutting it away
from the formative matrix of thought and launching it on its
free career, than the spoken word, and nothing finds its way
home to another mind more sharply.’ 2

When this idea is associated with divine power, we are on the
edge of a conception very similar to that which permits the
ascription of cosmological significance to the syllable Om, and
also to the less symbolic, but much deeper, concept embodied
in the Logos doctrine of St. John’s Gospel, ‘In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.’ 3 The earlier Mlmdmsa Sutras were content to prove the
eternity of the Word, but the Vedanta Sutras definitely connect
with this the idea of the Word as an emanation from God, and
as indicating divine activity. God revealed himself in the sound
forms and sent forth his activity into the planning and accom¬
plishment of the world.

Now if we think in this way, we can readily conceive of the
process by which reverence for the Scriptures became reverence
for the Word in general, and reverence for the Word became
reverence for the Divine energy behind it. The Scriptures are
invested with an almost metaphysical reality of their own, and
respect for authority becomes, in idea at least, reverence for
God. The Word heard by man is the plan followed by God, as

1 Cf. Farquhar, 125, ‘The absolute authority of the Veda requires for its
establishment the doctrine of its eternity, and that leads in turn to the
doctrine of the eternity of sound, and the indefeasible connexion between the
sound of a word and its meaning/

a Paterson, Nature of Religion> 390, 3 John i. 1.

84 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

well as the energy through which the plan is realized. We pass
from the region of blind submission to authority to that of
religious devotion to a supreme Reality.

When, further, we remember what was regarded by Sankara
as the central doctrine of the tradition handed down to him, viz.
the assertion of the essential unity of the Divine and the human,
we may trace a further step in the direction of the substantializing
and internalizing of authority. After all, Sankara did not go to
the sacred texts for anything in the nature of detailed instruc¬
tions, but just for support of this central doctrine, and it was the
' assertion of this truth which, above everything else, he found in
the texts. These served as a framework to this truth, and when
the truth was discovered it was even possible that the frame¬
work might be discarded. The contents, the supreme contents
of the Scriptures, were all that mattered, and their purpose was
just the encouraging of an apprehension of the One Reality, in
the apprehension of which the seeker submitted to no external
authority but realized the essence of his own Self. San¬
kara himself gives explicit permission for this transcending of
scriptural authority, although it must be admitted that in one
particular case he does so under circumstances which are slightly
suggestive of a desire to escape from a logical contradiction. 1
It may be noted that in this connexion Ramanuja pertinently
observes that such a concession weakens Sankara’s whole
position, inasmuch as, if Scripture is itself founded upon ne¬
science and disappears when nescience disappears, it cannot be
used to correct the errors of ordinary perception. 2

In all this discussion we have been concerned simply to
establish what we consider to be a position of some importance,
viz. that it is necessary to take a broader view than in some
quarters is customary of Sankara’s conception of authority, and
that in the last resort his subjection to authority is not necessarily
inimical to the philosophical spirit. There is much truth in the
contention of Prof. S. N. Tattvabhushan that Sankara’s ‘appeal
to Scripture is not as to an external authority to be blindly re-

1 Cf. Commentary on Sutras , IV. i. 3, ‘Nor do we mind your objecting
that, if perception &c., cease to be valid, scripture itself ceases to be so, for
this conclusion is just what we assume. . . . We ourselves assume that, when
knowledge springs up, scripture ceases to be valid.* S. B.E. XXXVIII. 340.

% Cf. S. B. E. XLVIIL 73.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY 85

ceived, but as to a valuable help to the attainment of true
wisdom—wisdom which is attainable by every true seeker after
truth '. 1 2 As we try to understand the attitude of Sankara we
shall find that we are frequently not far distant from the idea
that religion cannot be merely a subjective product of individual
imagination, but must be a response of the best within us to the
best without, this ‘best without us' being discovered to be of
the same spiritual quality and essence as the ‘best within 5 . 3

We must next inquire as to the influence which Sankara’s
views of authority had upon his method. Although, as we have
seen, his speculative freedom may not have been greatly re¬
stricted, yet it cannot be denied that he did not always live up
to the ideal we have suggested as associable with his attitude,
and that his acceptance of authority had to a certain extent a
hampering effect. It seems to lead, e.g., to a slight unfairness
in his treatment of his opponents. He assumes at the outset
that he has the monopoly of authority, and that, therefore,
while he may appeal from perception to authority, it is not
permissible for his opponents to do so. The latter must rely
wholly on experience and can find no escape from its contra¬
dictions. He alone occupies the privileged position.

Further, because of his respect for his authorities, Sankara
feels himself constrained to follow the order of the Sutras . In¬
stead of constructing his arguments on lines of his own and
arranging them so that they may lead most naturally to his
main conclusions, he has to follow a somewhat tortuous course,
winding in and out amongst the topics suggested by the Sutras ,
and the main doctrines have to be established, as it were, by the
way. Moreover, seeing that the main object formally was to
show agreement of the doctrines with the Vedanta texts, the
internal consistency of the arguments fell to a position of
secondary importance, and the necessity of so arranging them
as to bring out their coherence and completeness was not so
keenly felt as it might otherwise have been . 3 Also, as Deussen
points out in the same connexion, that fondness for dialectical
disputation which so often arises in association with minute

1 Three Great Acharyas, 76.

2 Cf. Prof; J." Arthur Thomson in Religions of the Empire, p. 300.

3 Cf. Deussen, *$?. FV220.

86 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

textual interest and desire to prove a scriptural basis led to
a certain want of proportion. Arguments for or against parti¬
cular positions were bandied to and fro without sufficient
regard to the importance of the disputed point relatively to
the whole.

But the chief difficulty for Sankara in the application of his
doctrine of authority was caused by the want of harmony
amongst the Upanishad texts themselves. It was easy when
Scripture was in conflict with sense perception to decide dog¬
matically in favour of the former, but when Scripture conflicted
with Scripture, what was to be done? Under such circum¬
stances it was clearly not to be hoped that all the texts should
support directly Sankara’s philosophical position. Yet if his
authority was to remain unimpaired, it was necessary that they
should at least appear to do so; and if their own intrinsic re¬
liability was to remain undamaged, it was necessary that dis¬
crepancies should be removed. Sankara was ready with two
devices—both of which have been popular with writers through¬
out the ages, when their canonical authorities have caused them
searchings of heart. The one is the principle of earlier and
later, to which we have already briefly referred in discussing
Sankara s affiliation to the Sutras, He applies it with great
vigour to the question of the distinction between the qualitative
and non-qualitative Brahman, on the basis of the principle
which he lays down as follows : ‘There being a conflict between
the two passages, we . . . decide that the texts referring to
Brahman as devoid of qualities are of greater force, because
they are later in order than those which speak of Brahman as
having qualities. Thus everything is settled.’ 1 The man of
straw has to be set up before he can be satisfactorily knocked
down. In application of the principlewe find, e.g., that a passage
such as Mundaka Upanishad I. i. 9, ‘From him who perceives
all and knows all, whose brooding consists of knowledge, from
him is born Hiranyagarbha, names, form and matter’, seems to
favour the qualitative view; whereas Brihadaranyaka Upani¬
shad III. 4. 2, ‘Thou couldst not see the true seer of sight’, &c.,
seems to favour the non-qualitative. Unfortunately, as we have
also seen, the application of the principle does not always work

1 S. B. E. XLVIII. 26.

HIS CONCEPTION OF AUTHORITY 87

out in favour of Sankara, for we find that, even in the same
Upanishad, passages with a negative tendency precede those
with a positive tendency. 1

Sankara’s method of reconciliation becomes more interesting,
and at the same time more elusive, when he adopts the second
device. We have already referred to it as one of the a priori
considerations affecting our estimate of his reliability as an
interpreter of the Sutras and the Upanishads. It is based on
the relation between the literal and the figurative, and ulti¬
mately on the distinction which he draws between the exoteric
and the esoteric and between lower and higher orders of
knowledge. He makes great use of these distinctions and finds
them very convenient for the purpose of removing discrepancies.
We are here concerned with his use of the distinction between
lower and higher knowledge only in connexion with the recon¬
ciliation of isolated and apparently contradictory texts; and it
would be unfair at this stage to prejudge the question whether
the distinction is in general ultimately defensible. As a method
of adjusting differences it may be said to proceed on the prin¬
ciple that, if a passage contradicts his main doctrine, it will have
to be interpreted figuratively, whereas, if it is in agreement with
his central views, it may be taken literally; and in passing we
may repeat the observation that, on the whole, Sankara finds
himself compelled to make much fuller use of figurative inter¬
pretation than does Ramanuja. As an illustration of Sankara’s
method we may take his refutation of the Sankhya doctrine of
the origin of the world in a non-intelligent pradhana . He points
out in his Commentary on Sutra I. 1. 6 that we must not make
use of metaphor in order to attribute the term ‘self’ to the
pradhana or non-intelligent principle. But in connexion with
another Sutra, viz. II. 4. 2, he claims the right to interpret
a Sutra figuratively if it occurs in the purvapaksha , or in relation
to a doctrine which has to be refuted, while on the other hand if
it occurs in a siddhanta Sutra, or in relation to a doctrine which
has to be established, he retains the right to interpret literally?
And in general, if difficulties occur in connexion with the created
world, he is inclined to have recourse to the idea that the world

1 Cf. Mundaka U. X. 1. 6 and I. 1. 9.

> Cf. B\E. XXXVIII. 77.

88 SANKARA'S CENTRAL TEACHING

has been created only in a figurative sense and that, therefore,
any difficulties which may arise are difficulties only from an
exoteric point of view.

Sankara’s Idealistic Attitude

t Having considered Sankara’s statement of preliminary con¬
ditions and his attitude to, and application of, the principle of
authority, we may now turn to his method of approach to his
main problem. His procedure might be described as an ex¬
pression of the idealistic spirit in philosophy, in so far as this
implies a turning away from the immediate and naively realistic
pronouncements of common sense. Deussen finds in him an
exemplification of the fundamental attitude of metaphysics—
that attitude without which metaphysics cannot exist, arising
out of dissatisfaction with the immediate data of the senses,
discontent with merely empirical and narrowly scientific in¬
vestigation, and an earnest desire to penetrate beyond the
appearances of things to the innermost secret of real being.
In the fleeting experiences of ordinary perception, in the
changing contents of space and time, in the unending succession
of causes and effects, there can be no rest for the human spirit.
Sankara has embarked on that unchanging quest in which
philosophy and religion are united, driven onwards by that
insistent consciousness the very essence of which, as Hegel tells
us, is the parting from and forsaking of what is immediate,
what is finite , and the seeking for that home-country of the soul
which, again in Hegel’s words, is £ the region of eternal truth, of
eternal rest, of eternal peace 5 . 1

And yet, in our fully justified endeavour to place Sankara in
the main line of philosophical succession, we must not allow our
description of the general philosophical attitude to be coloured
by an anticipation of what we conceive Sankara’s particular
philosophy to be. Because we may have a preliminary con¬
sciousness that Sankara teaches a doctrine of empirical illu-
sionism, we must not take it for granted that all philosophy is
rooted in a similar belief. Neither, on the other hand, should we
allow ourselves to take the most negative possible view of San¬
kara s concept of illusion, under the influence of any general

1 Hegel, Philosophy of Religion , i and 106.

THE IDEALISTIC ATTITUDE 89

reflection that in this matter he is in agreement with all philoso¬
phers of consequence. It may not be true that all philosophers
of consequence start with a theory of illusion, and it may also
turn out to be doubtful whether Sankara’s own doctrine in this
respect is so extreme as it is often supposed to be. We cannot
help thinking that Deussen has been neglectful of cautionary
considerations of this kind, and that his conception of what
philosophy has been, is, and always ought to be may have in¬
fluenced unduly his particular interpretation of the Vedanta
philosophy. He describes, e.g., the disposition to metaphysics
as ‘a more or less clear consciousness that all empirical in¬
vestigation and knowledge amounts in the end only to a great
deception, grounded in the nature of our knowing faculties, to
open our eyes to which is the task of metaphysics’. 1 On the
same page he asserts dogmatically that this ‘more or less clear
consciousness “became” a conviction’ in the teaching of Kant.
And with this view of philosophy as a basis he proceeds to erect
his System of the Vedanta.

Now it may be true that, e.g., Descartes, the father of
modern Western philosophy, began with the supposition that
all the things he saw around him might be fictitious, and that
he advocated a preliminary universal scepticism. 2 But surely
a preliminary supposition is very different from a dogmatic
conclusion, and to say that our senses may deceive us is very
different from asserting that they actually lead us astray, or that
all empirical data are illusory. Neither is it legitimate, as we
shall afterwards have occasion to point out more fully, to de¬
scribe Kant’s position as dogmatically negative rather than as
provisionally agnostic. But what we wish specially to protest
against at the present juncture is the deduction which Deussen
draws from his general philosophical position, and his resulting
inclination to prejudice the issue by suggesting that, if Sankara
is to be placed alongside of the greatest philosophers of all ages,
it must be expected at the outset that he will reach purely
negative conclusions, according to which the whole empirical
world will be swept away as altogether illusory.

Sankara’s general idealistic position is clearly stated in the
summary of his doctrines given by Ramanuja, ‘Therefore know
1 Deussen, S, V. 48. s Cf. Meditation, II.

90 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

that all particular things like rocks, oceans, hills, and so on, have
proceeded from intelligence. . . . Nothing whatever, at any
place or any time, exists apart from intelligence. 51 This de¬
pendence of so-called objective reality upon mind is a funda¬
mental assumption. Idealism, in almost all systems associated
with the term, has both an objective and a subjective phase,
sometimes the one and sometimes the other receiving the
greater emphasis. In connexion with the Vedanta it may be
easier to get a clear-cut statement of the objective than of the
subjective phase, but we believe that subjective idealism is the
natural way of approach to idealism of a negative and cosmical
character, and that the Vedanta, as interpretated by Sankara, is
no exception to this rule. If the world of experience is made up
of unsubstantial things such as dreams are made of, it would
seem necessary, in order to fill out the conception, to view this
world both as a projection of the individual self and as the out¬
come of cosmic imagining. The first point of view, giving
centrality to the consciousness of the ordinary perceiver, would
seem to have temporal priority in the thought of the individual
philosopher.

This idea of the centrality of consciousness is emphasized by
Sankara, in the summary of his doctrines given by Ramanuja.
He has been attacking the realists for having failed to give due
consideration to the power of consciousness and he proceeds:
‘The fact is, that in perceiving colour and other qualities of
things, we are not aware of a “shining forth 55 as an attribute of
these things, and as something different from consciousness;
nor can the assumption of an attribute of things called “light 55 ,
or “shining forth 55 be proved in any way, since the entire em¬
pirical world itself can be proved only through consciousness. ...
Consciousness is independent of any other thing, because,
through its connexion with other things, it is the cause of their
attributes and of the empirical judgements concerning them.

. . . Consciousness is itself the cause of its own “shining forth 55
as well as of the empirically observed shining forth of objects
such as jars and the like. 5 2

It may seem strange that we should quote from Ramanuja
this statement of Sankara’s position, but the Great Purvapakska ,

1 S. B. E. XLVIII. 23. <S. BE. XLVIIL 35.

THE IDEALISTIC ATTITUDE 91

as set forth by Ramanuja, seems to us as clear a presentation
of Sankara’s view as can be obtained; and it is admitted to be
such by competent scholars. Dr. Otto, e.g., says: ‘This Purva-
paksha is almost in every detail the standpoint of Sankara.
Clearly, essentially, and also incisively is his position con¬
secutively and gradually developed. And the presentation not
only goes to the root of the matter but is also fair. It is really
the opponent who here speaks, speaks well, and often with such
brilliant and illuminating treatment of his reasons that one
becomes concerned as to how Ramanuja can possibly main tain
his ground against him. It would not be easy to find a clearer,
and, one might add, a more impressive setting forth of the
Maya-vada than is offered in the Purvapaksha.’ 1 But even if
we still remain slightly suspicious of a statement of Sankara’s
position which emanates from Ramanuja, we find the centrality
of consciousness set forth unequivocally by Sankara himself,
though admittedly in close anticipation of a universalistic or
more objective point of view, in the following: ‘And if the
doctrine of the independent existence of the individual soul has
to be set aside, then the opinion of the entire phenomenal
world —which is based on the individual soul —having an inde¬
pendent existence is likewise to be set aside .’ 2 The words which
we have italicized are relevant to our purpose.

A broader foundation for our study may perhaps be found
in the introductory pages to Sankara’s Commentary on the
Vedanta Sutras. In connexion with Sutra I. 8. 1 he lays down
very emphatically the distinction between subject and object,
and warns us against superimposing the qualities of the object
upon the subject or the qualities of the subject upon the object.
They are as different as darkness and light, and the mixture of
them is due to ignorance. From this coupling and confusion of
the Real and Unreal arise all our difficulties. We must clearly
recognize that the intelligent Self is alone real and that all
objects are the product of wrong knowledge. In the passage
referred to, Sankara is more immediately concerned with show¬
ing how mistaken we are in regard to the Self, if we treat it as an
Object and identify it with the body and the experiences of the
body which come from sense-perception. But we may turn

’ Otto, Siddhanta des Ramanuja, 3. = S. B. E. XXXIV. 320.

92 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

his principle the other way about, and develop his warning in
the other direction, taking it as a caution against superimposing
the Self—or reality-value—upon ordinary objects. In this way
we shall understand his intense opposition to the idea that the
data of our ordinary experience have objective reality. Only the
Self is real in the truest sense, and to treat the objects of ex¬
perience also as real is to confuse them with the Self—a pro¬
cedure altogether illegitimate. In Sankara’s terminology ‘quali¬
ties of the object’ mean qualities of unreality.

We thus arrive at the point of view from which all the
diversities of our experience are regarded as only names and
forms. The forms of space and time, the categories of causality,
&c., are but our ways of viewing the world. So-called objects
are subjective merely—in the modern use of the term ‘sub¬
jective’ as indicating creation by the individual consciousness.
The Self is the only reality and everything else is relative to it.
In his Commentary on the Prasna Upanishad VI. 2, Sankara
says, ‘It cannot be said that there exists an object, but it cannot
be known. It is like saying that a visible object is seen but there
is no eye... .When there is noknowledge, there is no knowable.’ 1
Space, time, and causality are not characteristics of things in
themselves, but merely subjective determinations, and thus the
particular diversified appearances of things, in their unceasing
change and their interaction with one another, are seen to be
without any standing except that which is given to them as
projections of our inner experience.

Sankara's Relation to Buddhism

But in thus emphasizing the subjective aspect of the matter
we might seem to be assigning to Sankara an almost purely
Buddhistic position, and to be reckoning him as a follower of
the doctrine which asserts the momentariness of all things,
denies the reality of the self and the external world, and holds
that for completeness of view there is no need to go beyond our
own ideas and that vague principle of continuity which binds
them together in an endless chain. And indeed there have
been many, both in his own day and in ours, who have not
hesitated to regard Sankara as almost entirely under Buddhistic

1 Quoted by Pundit S. N. Tattvabhushan, Three Great Acharyas , 82.

HIS RELATION TO BUDDHISM 93

influence. Some have gone so far as to describe him as a crypto-
Buddhist, or a Buddhist in disguise. Prof. Das Gupta thus
concludes the first volume of his History of Indian Philosophy :
‘Sankara and his followers borrowed much of their dialectic
form of criticism from the Buddhists. His Brahman is very
much like the sunya of Nagarjuna. It is difficult to distinguish
between pure being and pure non-being as a category. The
debts of Sankara to the self-luminosity of the Vijnanavada
Buddhism can hardly be overestimated. ... I am led to think
that Sankara’s philosophy is largely a compound of Vijnanavada
and Sunyavada Buddhism with the Upanishad notion of the
permanence of self superadded.’ 1 Prof. Poussin says that the
two systems bear un air de famille which has been taken into
account more than once and from both sides . 2

And indeed it would not be surprising if there were many
close points of contact between Sankara and Buddhism. The
upholders of the tradition which he inherited were engaged in
constant controversy with the followers of Buddhistic thought.
Kumarila Bhatta, with whom Sankara had much serious con¬
troversy not unmingled with sympathy, was himself in early
days a student of Buddhism, and his reinstitution of Vedic
Hinduism was largely inspired by reaction from Buddhism.
It would be but natural, therefore, that when Sankara came to
the conclusion that Kumar ila Bhatta had gone too far in his
restoration of external ritual practice, he should have recourse
to the teachings of the school to which his opponent was also
opposed. Moreover, we have already noticed the close con¬
nexion between Sankara and Gaudapada 3 through Govinda,
and the possibility that Gaudapada may have been himself
a Buddhist. It seems indeed probable that Gaudapada, even if
not actually a Buddhist, at least regarded the Buddhist doctrine
of the void as a possible interpretation of the Upanishads. Prof.
Poussin calls him ‘the spiritual grandfather of Sankara’, and points
out that it is not without significance for the latter’s philo¬
sophy that Gaudapada ‘seems to have used Buddhistic works
or sayings, and to have adjusted them to his Vedantic design’. 4

1 Das Gupta, I. 494.

a Art. ‘Vedanta and Buddhism’, J, R, A. S n 1910. 3 Supra , p. 53.

4 Cf. Art. ‘Vedanta and Buddhism*, J. R. A, S., 1910.

94 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

But this leads to the further consideration that, in tracing the
influence of Buddhism upon Sankara, we have not to deal with
an alien system but with one which had fundamental natural
affiliations to that type of thought in the Upanishads of which
Sankara was the sworn defender. The depreciation of ordinary
experience, of the usual sources of pleasure and of external
ritualistic practices, was to be found equally in Buddhism and
the Upanishads; and there is a good deal in favour of the view
that Buddha, without explicitly stating his attitude, implicitly
admitted an ultimate reality. The difficulty of distinguishing
between pure Being and pure non-Being is one that is constantly
reappearing in Indian thought, and it is not easy to say dog¬
matically that a teacher who asserts pure non-Being is not at the
same time affirming his belief in an absolute but indescribable
reality. Prof. Das Gupta asserts roundly that Asvaghosa, an
early Buddhistic teacher of the first century A.D., ‘plainly ad¬
mitted an unspeakable reality as the ultimate truth’. 1 Prof. Rad-
hakrishnan is equally emphatic. He regards early Buddhism as
‘only a restatement of the Upanishads from a new standpoint’. 2
and holds that ‘the spirit of the Upanishads is the life-spring of
Buddhism’. The difference between them is, according to such
views, only a difference of emphasis. Buddhism finds a founda¬
tion in the law of causation, and the Upanishads in a permanent
substratum, and it may be argued that, unless causation is to be¬
come meaningless, it must imply a permanent basis of change.
Both Buddhism and the Upanishads refuse to ascribe reality to
any sections of the process of becoming, but it cannot be said
that Buddhism altogether denied ultimate reality. Almost, the
school adopted an agnostic attitude, and although the agnosti¬
cism often came dangerously near to denial, or at least to the
suggestion that any admission of reality was to be taken only as
a provisional compromise, it would be perhaps unwarranted to
assert that the Buddhistic teachers ever abandoned altogether
the position indicated in the early verses of the TJdana VIII. 3 :
‘There is an unborn, an unoriginated, an uncompounded; were
there not, O mendicants, there would be no escape from the world
of the born, the originated, the made, and the compounded.’ 3

1 Das Gupta, I. 138. ; 3 Radhakrishnan, I. 361.

3 Cf. also Radhakrishnan, I. 379.

HIS RELATION TO BUDDHISM 95

The similarity with Upanishad teaching in this connexion is so
striking that the Lankavatara is at pains to explain it away as a
piece of deliberate deception, ‘This explanation is given in order
to attract to our creed those heretics who are superstitiously
inclined to believe in the dtman doctrine/ 1

Thus it does not seem so passing strange that there should be
striking similarities between Buddhism and Sankara, seeing that
the sources of their thought lie so near together, and they have
certain fundamental conceptions in common. But in view of all
this, what are we to say of the vehement opposition to Buddhism
which we find in Sankara’s own writings, and particularly in the
second section of the second chapter of his Commentary on the
Vedanta Sutras ? Here he passes in review the various schools
of Buddhism, and shows uncompromising opposition. His
language is that of the full-blooded controversialist rather than
of the abstractly intellectual reasoner, and he states his fatal
opinion in these vigorous terms: ‘From whatever new points of
view the Buddha system is tested with reference to its proba¬
bility, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well dug in
sandy soil. It has in fact no foundation to rest upon, and hence
the attempt to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of
life is mere folly. Moreover, Buddha, by propounding these
mutually contradictory systems, teaching respectively the reality
of the external world, the reality of ideas only, and general
nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given
to make incoherent assertions, or else that hatred of all beings
induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which
they would become thoroughly confused. So that.. . Buddha’s
doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by those who have
a regard for their own happiness.’ 2

The first of these theories mentioned in this quotation, i.e.
that of realists (or Sarvastivadins), need not detain us. As an
atomic theory in a crudely realistic form, Sankara has already
disposed of it in his refutation of the Vaiseshikas, and he is
concerned now only with that aspect which is peculiarly
Buddhistic, viz. the doctrine of momentariness. If the atoms
are momentary, he argues, aggregates are much less possible

1 Quoted in Das Gupta, I. 147,
*■ §. B. E. XXXIV. 428.

96 . SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

than they were on the basis of the Vaiseshika philosophy. 1
Further, the causal relation is impossible, if the cause (as
momentary) has entirely passed out of existence before the
effect begins to be. a Again, the phenomena of memory are
inexplicable on the basis of momentariness : ‘The consciousness
of recognition takes place only in the case of the observing and
remembering subject being one.’ 3 Finally, the doctrine of
momentariness leads to the principle that entity may spring
from non-entity, and this doctrine contradicts experience, for,
as non-entity is always the same, the variety of effects would be
unintelligible. From a practical point of view, also, as Sankara
humorously points out, such a view would be an encourage¬
ment to laziness, for, ‘if it were admitted that entity comes from
non-entity, lazy inactive people would also obtain their purposes,
since non-existence is a thing to be had without much trouble.
Rice would grow for the husbandman even if he did not culti¬
vate his field; and the weaver, too lazy to weave the threads into
a whole, would nevertheless have in the end finished,pieces of
cloth, just as if he had been weaving.’ 4

But Sankara’s criticism of the other Buddhistic doctrines is of
much greater importance, and he expressly regards these as
representing the true views of Buddha, any concession to a
belief in the reality of the external world being merely a compro¬
mise through which Buddha conformed himself to the mental
state of some of his disciples .5 Supposing we admit that there
are no entities, that it does not matter whether or not existence
can come from non-existence for the simple reason that there
is no existence at all, then also there is neither positive nor
negative, and everything partakes of the character of dreams.
We may take the first step towards this nothingness by re¬
garding all the qualities of the so-called external world as
imaginary projections, set a-going by certain tendencies of an
instinctive character, and held together by a vague principle of
mental unity, called alayamjnana. The process by which we
acquire knowledge of the supposed external things is really
altogether internal, and the hypothesis of the existence of ex-

1 Cf. Sutra II. 2. 19. 3 lb. II. 2. 20.

4 lb. II. 2. 27 , S. B. E. XXXIV. 417.

5 Cf. 5 . B. E. XXXIV. 418.

3 lb. II. 2. 25.

HIS RELATION TO BUDDHISM 97

ternal things is altogether superfluous. 1 Buddha would not even
leave us that remnant of abstraction which Marvell would allow
when he speaks of

annihilating all that*s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

The act of knowledge and the object of knowledge are identical,
and waking states are constituted of ideas only in the same manner
as dreams. The variety amongst our experiences is to be ex¬
plained by impressions left by previous ideas, and, if we ask for
an explanation of the beginning of these previous ideas, the reply
given will be that there is no such beginning.

It was against this doctrine of Vijnanavada, or mentalism,that
Sankara specially directed his polemic. He appeals first of all to
the testimony of consciousness and the absurdity of denying it,
an absurdity equal to that of a man who, in the very act of eating,
should deny that he was eating. If the Buddhists admit that
the internal object of cognition is like something external, then
Sankara further points out that this is an implicit admission
that something external exists. Again—and here Sankara pro¬
vides us with an illustration of the popular tendency which
Hume afterwards found so useful to analyse—we cannot explain
varying perception except by reference to permanent and
distinct, and therefore external, realities. In short, according
to Sankara, when he gets fully under way in this particular
discussion, ideas are not self-contained; they imply external
things, and their variety cannot be explained apart from the
assumption of an external variety. To take refuge from this
difficulty in the idea of a beginningless process is an absurdity.
They imply also an apprehending Self, which 'is self-proved
and cannot be denied’. 3 If, Sankara further urges, the appre¬
hending Self is momentary, as the Buddhists allege—and here
in turn Sankara is criticizing Hume by anticipation—where can
we find a mental sphere for the impressions which are supposed
to be self-explanatory? Finally, our ideas of waking life cannot
be compared to those of dreams, because the latter are, and the
former are not, negated by our waking experience. Sankara
emphasizes this distinction still further in Sutra III. 2. 3, where

1 Cf. S.B. E. XXXIV. 419. » Cf. Ib. XXXIV. 424.

H

9 8 SANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

he says, Tt is not true that the world of dreams is true; it is mere
illusion and there is not a particle of reality in it. 51 Thus
Sankara goes on with his relentless destructive criticism of the
Buddhistic positions until in the end he reaches the vigorous
conclusion to which we have already referred, that c Buddha’s
doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have
a regard for their own happiness’.

And yet, after having* completely overthrown Buddhism in
this manner, Sankara in his main doctrines seems to return to
the very position which he has just been demolishing. After
having re-established the external world in great scorn of
Buddhism, he apparently sweeps it out of existence again when
the main principles of his philosophy are brought into operation,
and his negation seems as complete as that of Buddhism. He
retracts into the Self all the distinctions of phenomenal things;
he dismisses the categories as dealing with unrealities; and he
quotes with approval the Upanishad saying that ‘from death to
death goes he who sees plurality anywhere’. He tells us ex¬
plicitly that ‘modifications or effects are names only, while in
reality there exists no such thing as a modification’? In short
he seems by anticipation to have made impossible the distinction
which has just been drawn between dreams and waking ex¬
periences and to leave us unprotected from the conclusion that
waking experience is also only a dream. To adapt an Indian
metaphor, the fire which has been riding upon the piece of
wood has burned the whole city and also the original piece
of wood itself. And Kirtikar would seem to be justified when
he says that, according to the strictest Advaita, ‘the correct
position is . . . that the Universe has no reality’. 3

Is there indeed a contradiction here which cannot be ex¬
plained? It is easy enough to dismiss it as simply an incon¬
sistency, but that would be a rather crude procedure. It seems
at least necessary to relate it to Sankara’s broad distinction
between higher and lower knowledge, and between the esoteric
and the exoteric; and, while reserving judgement for a little on
the validity of the distinction in general, to admit in the present
connexion that Sankara’s criticism of the Buddhists was wholly

* S.B.E. XXXVIII. 135. * lb. XXXIV. 320.

3 Kirtikar, 194.

HIS RELATION TO BUDDHISM 99

justified from the exoteric point of view, and to suggest that, if
he otherwise departed from this point of view, the departure
was intentional and not merely an instance of logical incon¬
sistency.

It is further necessary to point out that Sankara’s polemic
against the Buddhists was largely due to his feeling that they
had insufficiently grasped the idea of the reality of the Self, and
from his emphasis on this idea he never departed. This is the
underlying motive of his objection to the doctrine of momentari¬
ness. In this connexion we may refer to the contention of Prof.
S. N. Tattvabhushan, who argues that the positions of Sankara
and the Buddhists are quite distinct, and that therefore he was at
liberty to refute the Buddhists without abandoning his own central
doctrine. 1 The truth is that Sankara agreed with the Buddhists
in a universal mental reference, but by ‘mind’ the Buddhists
were thinking primarily of transient acts of perception, whereas
Sankara had a much more permanent entity in view. He may
therefore quite well object to the position that all that exists is
those acts of the mind out of reference to the minds that perform
them, while holding still to the idea that all acts of perception
are dependent on a knowing subject. In fact the confusion of
Sankara’s position with that of the Buddhists (it may further be
pointed out) connects itself very closely with the identification
of the illusory with the phenomenal. We are not yet prepared
to accept this identification, and until it is established, it is at
least possible to conceive that Sankara might have objected to
the Buddhist doctrine of illusoriness, while still clinging to
a doctrine of phenomenal reference as his own central theme.

One or two other considerations may help to an under¬
standing of Sankara’s position in reference to the Buddhists.
While he was certainly opposed to the crude ritualistic realism
of Kumarila Bhatta, he was far more vehemently opposed to
the wide-sweeping negations of Buddhism. Therefore, in ac¬
cordance with his generally tolerant attitude to the popular
religion of his times, he may quite well have tried to establish
a position which, by emphasis upon the legitimacy of the
exoteric, would indicate his partial approval of popular practices
as contrasted with his wholesale denunciation of Buddhistic

1 Cf. Three Great Acharyas, 91.

100 § ANKARA’S CENTRAL TEACHING

negation. This he could accomplish by showing that belief in
an external world was relatively, though only relatively, true.
Further we can conceive that his provisional re-establishment
of the external world might be an important stage on the way
to the ultimate establishment of a rigorously idealistic position.
There is a method of propaedeutic known in India as the
Arundhatl method, according to which an astronomer, in
seeking to direct attention to a small and obscure star, might
first of all direct the attention of the observer to a larger star
near it. S imilar ly, Sankara may have felt that not much would
be gained by reaching his ultimate position directly and by the
help of the Buddhists, of whom he at least partly disapproved.
By coming too near to their position he would excite everywhere
the opposition of the ordinary mind and would not shake, even
for philosophical purposes, the popular beliefs. But if he could
first of all show his sympathy with the ordinary point of view,
and then, and only then, proceed to refute it, the victory he
would gain would be at once more striking and more secure.
In this way he might carry the ordinary thinker with him to¬
wards tha t position of strict monism which he desired to reach,
and which we must now consider. He could not have led his
adherents away from Buddhism except through some kind of
realism, but if he could first of all accustom them, along with
an incipient subjectivism, to the thought of a permanent beyond
each group of mental impressions, he might then introduce
them more easily to the idea of one permanent reality beyond
all particular existences. Even if his ultimate doctrine should
turn out to be an illusionism, he could at least, by means of
a temporary realism, prepare the way for that transition from
subjective to cosmic illusion which was necessary for the com¬
pletion of his doctrine in its stricter form.

V

THE ULTIMATE UNITY: THE TWO ORDERS OF
KNOWLEDGE: THE PLACE OF WORKS

I N our last chapter we left Sankara uncertainly poised
between the subjective idealism of the Buddhists and a kind
of common-sense realism, which realism, however, ought to be
treated as provisional. Its admission might be taken as a training
of the mind in the right direction, with the reasonable hope of
a further advance. If the mind can be accustomed to the
transition from the flux of ideas to something which is more
permanent than they are, it will not be so difficult to go on to
recognize the more general impermanence of the so-called
external things of experience, to regard them as the products of
our ignorance and to turn from them to a more constant reality.
We shall learn that to trust ourselves to them in their particu¬
larity is a mistake—whose mistake, it may be unnecessary to
say. It may be our mistake, or it may be a cosmic mistake, but
in any case it is a mistake, at least in the sense that it is a position
in which we cannot rest. As we saw in the short summary
already given, we must, in order to reach a position ultimately
satisfactory to the philosophical mind, retract our concession of
the reality of particulars, we must get rid of the diversifying
influence of space and time, and wind up the stretched-out
chain of causes and effects into the One Being in which, in
general, cause and effect are indistinguishable. Whatever may
be our doubts about the reality of particulars in the Vedanta
and about the closeness of Sankara’s affiliation with Buddhism,
there can be no uncertainty whatsoever about his assertion of
the reality of the One. For him 'the One remains, the many
change and pass’, and under his guidance we are expected to
reach the abiding One, passing through a vivid consciousness
of the transiency of the many, and a recognition of them as
merely names and form, the suppositions of our ignorance—
and yet, perhaps, not of our ignorance alone.

Space has been used to aid us to distinguish one particular
thing from another, and all particular things from our own
selves, as when we say, 'This is here’, and 'This is there’, and
'This is not myself’. But may we not, it is suggested, abolish

102

THE ULTIMATE UNITY

these distinctions and find rather in the unbroken continuity of
space a symbol of the underlying unity in which all differences
between Things', all differences between them and us, dis¬
appear? As Dr. Carpenter puts it, £ The knowledge of Brahman
is embarrassed with no space relations.’ 1 Similarly the unbroken
continuity of time may become suggestive of that which time
cannot affect—the permanent and the unchanging. And where
there are no changes, there can be no causal relations, for, if we
mean anything by cause and effect at all, we mean an event or
an occurrence. So one after another, the categories may be
retracted into the unbroken unity of the self, and perhaps it
may turn out that the illusion of diversity in which they have
encouraged us is a mistake also as regards the self of the
individual, and that there is but one Infinite Self, the distinction
between ourselves and the infinite disappearing in company
with all other diversities. c The One remains.’

This would certainly seem to be a ‘rigorous monism’, as
Kirtikar describes it,* though for the time being we may leave
open the question whether, in its rigour, it is monism or non¬
dualism, the difference between the two seeming to be that
in non-dualism the distinctions are actual but not ultimate,
whereas in monism they are neither actual (from the proper
point of view) nor ultimate. Non-dualism suggests the ultimate
transcendence of distinctions, whereas monism suggests rather
their ultimate negation. The textual basis for this view of
reality is to be found mainly in the Commentary on Sutra II. i.
14. In connexion with this, as well as with the earlier, I. 1. 4,
Sankara relies to a considerable extent on the Sixth Prapathaka
of the Chhandogya Upanishad, and quotes with approval the
passages, ‘as by one clod of clay all that is made of clay is known,
the difference being only a name, arising from speech, but the
truth being that all is clay’, and, 'Thus vanishes what we call
. fire, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech.’ 3 He
quotes also, with special reference to the idea of unity with the
Universal Self, Tn that all this has its Self; it is the True, it is
the Self, thou art That.’ 4 His expository comment on these and
other passages from the Upanishads is: 'These modifications or

1 Carpenter, 339.

3 Chhandogya U. VI. 1. 4 and VI. 4.1.

3 Kirtikar, 3.

4 Ib. VI.8.7.

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 103

effects are names only, exist through or originate from speech
only, while in reality there exists no such thing as a modifica¬
tion.’ And, again, ‘This manifold world with its objects of
enjoyment, enjoyers, and so on, has no existence apart from
Brahman.’ 1 He is apparently at the same time conscious that
such passages might be susceptible of a less rigorously monistic
interpretation and used to support the doctrine that both unity
and the manifold are true. So he goes on to make his meaning
explicit as against the upholders of the relative reality of the
manifold. ‘The phrase’, he says, ‘having its origin in speech,’
declares the ‘unreality of all effects’. And he removes all
possible doubt by the further statement, ‘Unity is the one true
existence, while manifoldness is evolved out of wrong know¬
ledge.’ 1 Over and over again he reiterates the opinion that ‘the
Self is altogether without qualities and is absolutely changeless’.
Nothing can be real, according to him, which has only non-
continuous existence. The temporal is the denial of reality, and
the real can be found only in the eternal .3 In similar vein Max
Muller says that the general principle of the Vedanta is ‘that
nothing that is real can ever be annihilated, so that nothing
which is liable to annihilation has a right to be called real.’ 4
Sankara’s underlying thought, translated into more modern
language, seems to be this. Our categories are thrown out in
order to grasp the objects of the world, and are more or less
adequate in so far as these objects are considered in their
particularity and from the ordinary empirical point of view.
But for the ultimate reality they are inadequate, and the world
they have helped us to construct dissolves into nothingnesses
when we recognize the nominalistic and subjective character of
its contents. And yet in its very dissolution are we not left with
a consciousness, not of absolute nonentity, but of fundamental
reality? These categories and forms of knowledge, together
with the world they give us, are indeed a construction of our
self. But what is this self? Is it a lonely existence? It has sent
out the categories, as it were, and taken them back again into
itself, but does it thereby contract into a mere pin-point of
existence ? Surely there must be some significance in this con-

■ S.B. E. XXXIV. 320, 321. - S. B. E. XXXIV. 322, 323.

3 Cf. S. B. E. XLVIII. 33 - 37 - 4 Muller, 5 . 5 . 154-

THE ULTIMATE UNITY

104

stant striving beyond the self; surely it indicates some con¬
nexion between the self and a further existence. From philo¬
sophic motive we may have cancelled or denied the outgoing
expansive movement, but this does not necessarily mean that
it is altogether wrong. The truer attitude would be to say rather
that it has taken a wrong direction. And we may correct this
error of direction, while preserving the significance of the
expansive movement. Not by going outwards but by pene¬
trating inwards shall we find the reality we are in search of.
Our self is not a shadowy and vanishing point of existence, but
a focusing of the universal Self, a coming into concentrated
luminousness of that vast ultimate Being with which we are
essentially one. In this new direction the reality which our
categories have failed to grasp may be found. That art Thou—
tat tvam asi .

Sankara tells us that this great truth, which Max Muller
describes as the ‘boldest and truest synthesis in the whole
history of philosophy 5 , 1 can be established only by the Scrip¬
tures. We remember that in his Commentary on Sutra I. 1. 4
he says: ‘Nor again can Brahman ... be the object of per¬
ception and the other means of knowledge; for the fact of every-
thing having its self in Brahman cannot be grasped without the
aid of the Scriptural passage, ‘That art thou. 53 We were not,
however, disposed fully to accept Sankara’s statement or to
accuse him of being so unphilosophical as to rely implicitly on
authority. We are inclined rather to regard this identity con¬
sciousness as welling up from the depths of experience and as
corroborated by rather than founded upon the appeal to
authority. As Prof. B. K. Shastri puts it, ‘Life trained upon
itself cannot but reveal its own potentialities. 53 We are disposed
to think that Sankara discovered his ultimate unity by training
life or experience upon itself, and not merely through the
Scriptures. But however this may be, it was in any case a bold
synthesis, and would carry more conviction if individual con¬
viction was linked up with communal intellectual tradition.

The direction of thought is mainly negative and may seem
to be wholly abstract, the result of simply thinking away
differentiations until nothing is left. It may be due, as we shall

1 Muller, £. S. 123. * S.B. E. XXXIV. 23. 3 B. R. Shastri, 220.

/ *

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE ioj

later have to suggest, to a too exclusively intellectual attitude^
over against the ultimate reality, or, within the range of this
attitude, it may arise from a wrong conception of how thought
should work towards a completed form of knowledge. The
underlying principle may be taken to be that perfect knowledge
involves identity with its object, and authority for this may be
found in Mundaka Upanishad III. z. 9, ‘He who knows Brah¬
man becomes Brahman.’ It is urged that in all cognitions
approaching perfection the perceiving subject unites itself with
the principle of the essential self of the object perceived. Even
in popular language to know a thing is to enter into the spirit of
the thing; and the philosophical interpretation of this is that to
.know a thing you must become that thing; or, as Kirtikar puts
it, ‘When the cognition is complete, the subject and object must
become identical.’ 1

In regard to its direction this intellectualistic endeavour after
identity may be profitably contrasted with the position set forth
by Mr. Bertrand Russell, ‘Philosophical contemplation, when
it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the
universe is akin to man. All acquisition of knowledge is an
enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained
when it is not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for
knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish
in advance that its objects should have this or that character,
but adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in its objects.
This enlargement of the Self is not obtained when, taking the
Self as it is, we try to show that the world is so similar to this
Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of
what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of self-
assertion, it is an obstacle to the growth of the Self which it
desires and of which the Self knows itself capable.’ 3

The tendency which Mr. Russell is here criticizing is of
course slightly different from that found in Sankara, inasmuch
as the latter did not consider the external world as of such
importance that any knowledge of it whatsoever would lead to
an expansion of the Self; and in emphasizing the necessity of
directing thought towards the Self, Sankara had certainly not
in view the idea of obtaining thereby a fuller knowledge of the
1 Kirtikar, 59. * Problems of Philosophy, 246.

i©6 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

external world. An effort so directed would have been for
Sankara a contravention of his fundamental caution that we
should not apply the qualities of the Subject to the Object. But
the passage seems to be worth quoting in order to show the
vivid contrast between the spirit of realism, whether new or old,
and the spirit of such idealistic monism as Sankara represents.
For the latter the expansion of the Self is essentially to be
found, not by looking outwards but by looking inwards, not by
affirmation and construction, but by negation and retraction;
and this metaphysical introspection, so far from being an
obstacle, is the only true method of knowledge.

But while we have spoken of the narrowly intellectualistic
character of this attitude, and of its negative and abstract
tendency, we must on no account dismiss it as if this were
a complete characterization of it. We must never forget that it
is an expression of the yearning of the mystic throughout the
ages, and that Sankara is also striving to satisfy a desire.which
is innate in human nature. Positively it belongs to the ‘Type of
the wise who soar but never roam’; 1 negatively it is the result of

those obstinate questionings
Of Sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized. 2

Amongst the mystics, Juliana of Norwich says that it is her
aim to ‘noughten all else that is made, for to love and to have
God that is unmade’, and, in the same strain, Jacob Boehmen
says, ‘When thou canst throw thyself for a moment into that
where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God
speaketh.’ And when we go farther back in history we find an
almost exact anticipation of the spirit of Sankara’s quest in the
thought and practice connected with the Eleusinian mysteries.
A recent writer hts beautifully expressed the essence of the
religious movement in words which might so easily be taken as
a description of Sankara’s main teaching that it is worth while
quoting them at length. ‘This yearning to embrace and become
the All, to lose and dissolve himself and the separate natures

1 Wordsworth, To a Skylark.

2 Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality.

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 107

of all other things in the absolute simplicity of some deeper
form of being, reveals the secret of man’s sin and imperfection
and the way of his salvation. It is the homing instinct of the
soul, guiding her unerringly through the trackless variety of the
manifold world with all its swirling confusion of phantom forms
and things, back to the undivided unity and calm of God, there
to yield up her distraught and restless individuality and forget
her separate self and the separate selves of all other things in
him. The existence of many natures and things in their
difference and isolation. ... is evidence of a metaphysical catas¬
trophe. ... Or it is at least the sign of some monstrous deformity
of our vision which makes us see what is really One as if it were
many, and what is really perfect as if it were imperfect.’ 1

Coming back again to more modem times, we may trace the
same line of thought in one who could hardly claim to be
enrolled amongst religious mystics, but who, nevertheless, has
some points of affinity with them. Schopenhauer was greatly
influenced by the Upanishads, and he makes use of their
central idea in his analysis of aesthetic contemplation in language
which is strikingly suggestive of Sankara: ‘If, raised by the
power of the mind, a man relinquishes the common way of
looking at things, ... if he thus ceases to consider the where and
the when, the why and the whither of things, and looks solely
at the what; if further he does not allow abstract thought, the
concepts of the reason to take possession of his consciousness,
but instead of all this gives the whole power of his mind to
perception, sinks himself entirely in this; ... if thus the object
has passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the
subject out of all relation to the will, then that which is known
is no longer the particular thing as such; and therefore he who
is sunk in this perception is no longer individual, for in such
perception the individual has lost himself; but he is pure, will¬
less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge . . . whoever now
has, after the manner referred to, become so absorbed and lost
in the perception of nature that he only continues to exist as the
pure knowing subject, becomes in this way directly conscious
that, as such, he is the condition, that is, the supporter of the
world and all objective existence. . . . Thus he draws nature
1 Art. by B. A. G. Fullar in Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1922.

io8 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

into himself, so that he sees it to be merely an accident of his

own being.’ 1

We have quoted these parallels from the mystics and quasi¬
mystics in order to support the view that Sankara’s position
exemplifies a very natural tendency of the human soul. Some¬
times we wonder, however, whether he has reached in all its
fullness the faith of the true mystic who desires ‘the expansion
of the Self to become the Self of all’, 3 and whether the negative
and restrictive attitude which sometimes appears as a slightly
unattractive element in his teaching may not be due to the fact
that he did not surrender himself wholeheartedly to the impli¬
cations of his own assertion of identity. We are led to refer here
again to his excessively intellectual point of view and its hamper¬
ing influence. In his attempt to gain a knowledge of the Self is he
not tempted to forget his own rule that the Subject must never
be treated as an Object? We are far from objecting—as will
be pointed out hereafter—to the subject-object relation even in
respect of the Divine reality, provided that this kind of relation¬
ship is associated with the necessary safeguards, but our conten¬
tion at this stage is that for Sankara, so long as he retains an
almost purely intellectualistic attitude, this is a dangerous pro¬
cedure. It leads him to embark upon an impossible quest.
Whilst he remains within the sphere of knowledge merely, he
must perforce use the categories, but yet, just as he has dis¬
covered in other respects, he finds them inadequate, and is thus
forced into successive abstractions and negations. Despite his
own principle, the Self, because of his intellectualism, remains
an object, and because he has provided no other than purely
intellectual means for overcoming the separateness of the object,
he is, as it were, hoist with his own petard.

Thus Sankara is forced to share with Bradley and Ward the
experience that in our quest for the real self we cannot turn the
self into an object without its ceasing to be a subject, i.e. without
its ceasing to be the very kind of reality of which we are in search.
Through two whole chapters Bradley pursues the search for the
Self, and remains discouraged. He comes in the end to the con¬
clusion that the self is unintelligible, that ‘in whatever way the

1 Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea , Bk. III. 231 and 234.

4 Cf, Kirtikar, 129.

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 109

self is taken, it will prove to be appearance’. 1 It does not pro¬
vide a principle of explanation, but ‘so far from supplying such
a principle, . . . seems, where not hiding itself in obscurity, a
mere bundle of discrepancies’. 2 And Sankara’s warning against
transferring objective qualities to the subject leads him to a line
of thought almost exactly similar to that of Ward. Sankara
points out with justice that, if we make the self the object of
psychological inquiry, it constantly eludes us. If we attempt to
put into form our knowledge of the Self, another self has con¬
stantly to be posited to carry through this formulation. We
discover that as soon as the self acquires content as the result of
our investigations, this content has immediately to be trans¬
ferred from the T’ to the ‘me’, from the pure to the empirical
ego. The ‘I’ still remains which refuses to become an object.
It acquires content only to surrender it again. It enters into
knowledge only as it becomes the empirical self and therefore
ceases to be that which we want to know. In more modern
terminology, such as Ward would favour, we can never get
beyond the eternal distinction between subject and object, and
we find that the subject persistently resists any attempt to treat
it as an object .3

Can this constant subject, then, never be known ? Both
Sankara and Ward would answer this question in the negative as
far as ordinary knowledge is concerned, but both would make
a distinction between ordinary knowledge and a higher kind of
experience or intuition, and would so far qualify their denial.
But in making this concession there is an important difference
between the two philosophers. For Ward experience yields up
a fuller result than is possible for Sankara by reason of the
latter’s more purely intellectual point of view. We are sure of
the pure ego, according to Ward, just because of its activity ,
which is persistent so long as we have experience. Sankara, on
the other hand, refuses to allow that the Self is an agent. In his
Commentary on Sutra II. 3. 40 he says, ‘The Self’s being an
agent cannot be founded on its real nature, because (if it were
so) the impossibility of final release would follow. For if being

1 Appearance and Reality y 101 and 118. 3 lb. 120.

3 Cf. Ward, Principles of Psychology , 376 ff, and the present writer’s article
on Sankara and James Ward* in the Sir Asutosh Mukherjea Jubilee Volumes ,

I. 331 ff.

no

THE ULTIMATE UNITY

an agent belongs to the soul's nature, it can never free itself
from it; and, as long as man has not freed himself from activity,
he cannot obtain his highest end, since activity is essentially
painful .' 1 And again he says, 4 The result of all this is that the
agentship of the Self is due to limiting adjuncts only .' 2 If
Sankara had not made this refusal of activity to the Self, he
would have found that experience would have given him fuller
results. And he would have been able to overcome more
adequately the externality of the Self treated as an object. For,
if the idea of intelligence is dissociated from activity, the Self
tends to remain an object of contemplation, or at least to pass
from the subjective to the objective sphere, in which sphere the
categories turn out to be insufficient; and we can get beyond
appearances only if we are content to allow the pure ego to be
a characterless universal. So, on this procedure we seem to be
shut up to negation. As Prof. Radhakrishnan puts it, 4 We cannot
find the self in any corner of the field of consciousness. Not
finding it there, we rush to the conclusion that it is nothing .' 3
The Self, still treated as an object, becomes unknowable and
indefinable, and the identification aimed at in the Vedanta has
to be arrived at by way of negation. Thus we argue that if
Sankara had made more use of the concept of activity, he would
have been more consistent with his own principles and would
have reached fuller results through the application of his ideal
of mystical identification with the universal. It was no doubt
hard for him to modify his intellectualism, for it was upon
intellectual procedure that fundamentally he relied; and he once
went so far as to suggest that a man who adopted an erroneous
argument might compromise his salvation. Yet some advance
in this direction would have had useful consequences. As Prof.
Alexander says, 4 The world is not what it is merely for intellect
alone; its nisus towards what is higher enters into its constitu¬
tion, and as impregnated with this tendency, it affects the mind
by ways other than cognition, though interpretable in the ways
of cognition .’ 4 If greater stress had been laid on the principle of
activity, Sankara might have approached more nearly to the
position that union with the divine may be accomplished, not so

* S.B.E. XXXVIII.53. 3 lb.XXXVIII. 57. 3 Radhakrishnan, 1 .163.

4 Alexander, Space, Time t and Deity, II. 377.

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE in

much by abstraction from, or thinning down of, experience as by
emphasis on the idea that the human mind in its activity is repro¬
ducing the orderly and manifold activities of the Divine mind.

Now the idea of identity, when associated with the idea of
activity, is on the point of passing over into the idea of com¬
munion, in which the subject-object relation, while not abolished,
does not remain poverty-stricken as with Sankara, but finds its
poverty transformed into riches. Activity carries with it an
interpretative power which the purely intellectual attitude does
not possess. The latter is always more or less helpless before
the problem of deriving plurality from unity, and can deal with
the unity satisfactorily only by denying the plurality in its distri¬
bution and in its changes. When further, this unity is given
a narrowly religious application and used to satisfy a desire for
salvation by means of deliverance or release, this further associa¬
tion increases the naturally unproductive character of a purely
intellectual solution. There is greater readiness to acquiesce in
the conception of a pure undifferenced unity from which there
is no return to particularity, if no such return is desired. Dis¬
satisfaction with such a characterless negation can come only
from a desire to explain the world or to operate within it; but
when all connexion with the world is felt as a disturbance of
religious ecstasy, the desire to explain it vanishes away, and
acquiescence in a non-explanatory and intrinsically unintelli¬
gible principle is complete. When practical relationships with
the wtfrld are ignored at the bidding of religious requirements
narrowly conceived, the use of the concept of activity for the
purposes of the interpretation of the ultimate is not likely to be
either popular or effective.

In the further treatment of his supreme principle Sankara’s
general position is that predicates which may be applied are to
be taken not as implying actual differences in the Ultimate, but
simply as refuting contrary predicates obviously unsuitable . 1
When, e.g., we say that Brahman is knowledge we are concerned
rather with affirming that Brahman is not not-knowledge than
with ascribing any positive characteristic to him. Properly we
can apply to Brahman only the reiterated statement ‘neti, neti’,
'■‘it is not, it is noth We may call him Being ($a£),if we please,but
> Cf. S. B. E. XLVIII. 28.

112

THE ULTIMATE UNITY

we must also remember that he is non-Being in respect of any
empirical conception of existence. We may call him thought
(cit), but we must use this in accordance with the general prin¬
ciple just stated, to signify that Brahman is nothing lower than
thought, and we must refrain from ascribing to him any con¬
sciousness with which we are familiar in our experience. Es¬
pecially must we be careful not to think of him as the subject of
cognition, because this would imply a differentiated object, and,
on the other side of the relation, would also imply a distinction
between the knower and the consciousness which he possesses.
Brahman is consciousness pure and simple, not a conscious sub¬
ject jp/ws his consciousness. Any difference between conscious¬
ness and the conscious subject would have to be ascribed to an
unreal principle of egoity. Similarly, we may ascribe to him the
predicate of bliss (ananda), but we must remember that it is bliss
‘without the fruition of happiness’. It is not the awareness of
satisfied endeavour, it is rather the assured calm of absolute
self-absorption, the conscious gradual sinking into Being, the
oncoming' sense of infinity, without disturbance of particular
thought or particular interest.

But having discovered to some extent what Sankara intends
by identity with this pure Being, whom for the present we must
leave in such a state of purity and vagueness that it is difficult,
though not impossible, to distinguish it from Nothing, we
must next ask how this identification is to be accomplished.
This leads us to consider that fundamental distinction between
lower and higher knowledge, through which Sankara arrives at
the consummation of his endeavour. The point which we have
specially to keep in view is the degree of abruptness of the
distinction. If the goal is negative, it is probable that the ap¬
proach to it will be by means of abrupt negation, but we have
also to keep in mind the other possibility that the negation of
the lower may be its fulfilment and that the negative may be
the cutting edge of a positive.

Sankara’s view would seem to be that the differences between
the ordinary and the truly philosophical points of view are so
striking that the processes and results with which we are con¬
cerned in the two spheres cannot be put into the same class. In

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 113

the one class we have a body of knowledge which is altogether
exoteric, a lower doctrine (apara vidya), and in the other an
illuminating, momentary, and yet eternal, flash of combined
intuition and revelation, yielding—if ever it can be fixated—the
higher doctrine (para vidya) which alone attains to truth. In
the first group we may put all our ordinary experiences, our
search after location and date, causes and effects, with all the
practical consequences which flow from this conglomeration of
information, all the gropings of our reasoning faculty, and all
the speculative problems which remain unsolved so long as we
try to lighten the darkness by the flickering candle of our own
powers of intellect. Within this lower knowledge we are helpless
prisoners, and cannot by any means save our souls. We may
pass restlessly from one phase of experience to another, but
cannot shake ourselves free from the degradation of the ordinary.
We may by strenuousness rise painfully and slowly upwards to¬
wards God, but at the end it is not the Absolute or the Ultimate
into whose presence we come. We have reached only what
might be described as a ‘service 5 God, who may be suitable as
an object of worship and with whom we may desire indefinitely
continued communion. But he will not be the goal of our soul’s
endeavour, because we shall still be ascribing qualities to him,
and these qualities will hang like veils between us and the
ultimate reality. And whilst the God to whom we attain, and
whom we think we know, continues in misleading distinctness
before us as an object, we shall yet remain in separation from
him, and shall not reach that consummation of unity which
constitutes our release and our salvation.

And on the other side we may place that higher wisdom
through which God and man are so closely brought together
that we can hardly decide whether we ought to speak of revelation
or of intuition—so inevitably does the descending of the Divine
come to meet the uprising of the human heart , the best without
us mingling with the best within. The product of this com¬
mingling is a knowledge of that Reality which lies hidden be¬
neath all the experiences of man, that God without qualities
hidden behind that fullness of divine quality which we take as
the object of our worship. In this knowledge is our peace, for
we are delivered from all that perplexes us in our outward

1"

„ 4 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

gazing upon the world, and the God whom we are in search of
no longer stands over against us in a separating distinctness,
but, through that vagueness in which all outlines are blurred,
passes from the outward to the inward and welcomes us to a
unity which we discover has always been the truth of things,
even though at this critical point of transition it may be pre¬
sented with the abruptness of a new discovery. As has been said,
in such knowledge intuition and revelation become merged in
one; and so the position of Sankara recalls the old texts of the
Mundaka Upanishad, where it is said that ‘when a man’s nature
has become purified by the serene light of knowledge, then he
sees him, meditating upon him as without parts’, and, again,
‘the wise, having reached Him who is omnipresent everywhere,
devoted to the Self, enter into him wholly ’. 1 And to those who
are familiar with the New Testament it suggests that wisdom
which is both pure and peaceable, which is from above,—a gift
which ‘cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning ’. 3

The contrast between the two divisions is made so definite by
Sankara that the points of view become almost exclusive of one
another. We reach the unity only by passing very resolutely
from the one kind of experience to the other, and when we escape
from the land of bondage we carry nothing with us. We are led
to ask the question whether this abrupt distinction and defini¬
tive transition is either natural or necessary ? Is it even possible,
or, if it is possible, is it desirable? Must we have separation as
well as distinction ?

The distinction certainly gathers up within itself and con¬
tinues two common differentiations, viz. between the ordinary
and the scientific point of view, and between the scientific and
the purely philosophical. With the first distinction we are but
little concerned, as the necessity for it would be a matter of
agreement amongst all who have ceased to be the slaves of
custom and convention and prudential maxims. It is with the
second distinction that we have to do, and here also there is
considerable agreement about its necessity, and controversy has
reference only to the degree of abruptness with which the
distinction ought to be made.

1 Mundaka U . III. I. 8 and III. 2. 5.

2 James I. 17

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 115

In these days no one would contend that merely scientific
categories are adequate to reality, but all down through the ages
also—from the Upanishads, through Sankara, right down to
modern Western thinkers—we find a continuous depreciation of
mere knowledge of a purely scientific character. In the Brihada-
r any aka Upanishadlll. 5. 1 we read,‘Therefore let a Brahmana,
after he has done with learning, wish to stand by a childlike
state.’ It is true that Max Muller, mainly because of a suspicion
that ‘knowledge of babes’ may be ‘a Christian rather than an
Indian idea’, 1 translates the passage ‘Therefore let a Brahmana,
after he has done with learning, wish to stand by real strength’.
But even Max Muller interprets ‘real strength’ as meaning
‘knowledge . . . which enables us to dispense with all other
knowledge’, and the translation which implies ‘childlikeness’ is
supported by such authorities as Gough and Deussen. Still
more striking is the support which is given to this interpretation
by Sankara himself, who takes for granted the meaning of
‘childlikeness’, refutes certain mistaken deductions from it, and
expounds the passage as follows, ‘The meaning of the clause
under discussion thus is, Let him be free from guile, pride and
so on, not manifesting himself by a display of knowledge,
learning and virtuousness, just as a child . . . does not strive to
make a display of himself before others.’ 2 Thus in both ancient
and medieval Indian thought there is testimony to the idea that
he who would enter the kingdom of the knowledge of God
must become as a little child. And if we wish to bring the
testimony down to modem times we may unite in relation to
this attitude both East and West, and find the lesson of humility
in respect of knowledge impressively'taught by one of the fore¬
most scientists of modem times. ‘Science’, says Prof. J. Arthur
Thomson, ‘gives us no more than descriptive formulations, and
we strain at the limitations of our faculties when, as Sir Thomas
Browne said, “we think of things that thoughts do but tenderly
touch”. Even when the minor mysteries disappear before
Science, the fundamental mysteriousness of nature remains,
unless we are content or positivistically compelled to sink the
big questions altogether. Even when we reduce everything

1 Cf. *S. B. E. XV. 130 and Radhakrishnan. I. 177.

* S.B.E. XXXVIII. 326.

1 x6 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

measurable and ponderable to the lowest common denomina-
tors—the irreducibles of the day, like electrons and protons—
our experience is not thereby rationalized. We seek for a synop¬
tic vision, in the light of the Greatest Common Measure. When
the half-gods go, the God arrives.’ 1

But as we probe farther into the matter and attempt to repre¬
sent more definitely the central teaching of Sankara, we find
that he reaches conclusions in regard to which it would be
difficult to claim general agreement. We have hints not merely
of the necessity of a higher point of view but of its total separa¬
tion from the lower. The particular character of the difficulty
may be set forth by a phrase which Deussen uses when intro¬
ducing this very topic of Sankara’s distinction between the
exoteric and the esoteric. The German philosopher says that
metaphysics must ‘in many cases renounce results that can be
clearly represented’, and adds, ‘All this demands great power
and habit of abstraction, attainable only by a few ' 2 Now this
may be quite true, but the way in which the statement is put
suggests an excessive emphasis upon the abstraction and nega¬
tion, and implies an abrupt cutting off of the higher from the
lower. Deussen thus prepares our minds for the acceptance of
the definite separation which is to be found in Sankara himself,
and for which, it may be noted in passing, the latter derives
little support either from the Upanishads or the Sutras . Fur¬
ther, the words we have italicized seem to suggest an aristocratic
exclusiveness—perhaps not altogether unconnected with tradi¬
tional caste-divisions—which results in placing the two kinds of
knowledge side by side, stressing their opposition rather than
their relationship, and assigning possession of them to different
classes of people rather than to different stages in the same
mental development. The idea of privilege thus creeps in, an
idea similar to that which Lotze so severely criticizes in the

1 In Religions of the Empire , 413. We may compare also the attitude of
Schopenhauer, expressive, however, of a very different mood: ‘This is the state
which I have described above as necessary for the knowledge of the Idea, as
pure contemplation, as sinking oneself in perception, losing oneself in the
object, forgetting all individuality, succeeding that kind of knowledge which
follows only the principle of sufficient reason and comprehends only rela¬
tions.’ We perhaps find something of the same tendency in the abhor¬
rence of the merely moralistic point of view which is expressed by such
writers as Bosanquet.

3 Deussen, 97 [italics mine].

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 117

concluding chapter of his Philosophy of Religion, where he con¬
trasts the attitude of the man who attempts to make a symbolic
creed yield up its meaning to intellectual inquiry with that of
the man who considers the creed as it stands sufficient for the
needs of the crowd while he himself occupies somewhat dis¬
dainfully the vantage ground of the higher point of view. We
are here concerned, however, not with the social but with the
intellectual aspect of the matter, and it is difficult not to connect
the distinction with a certain intellectual pride and a contempt
for the lower—a looking on it as unworthy in itself or as sus¬
ceptible only of negation rather than of elevation or transforma¬
tion. In this way, in the sphere of the intellect renunciation
or negation takes the place of sublimation or transcendence.
There is no natural point of contact between the two kinds of
knowledge, and the higher is slightly patronizing in reference
to the lower.

Sankara himself finds it impossible to conceive of co-opera¬
tion between the two orders. They are mutually exclusive.
‘How can the cognition of unity’, he asks, ‘remove the manifold
if both are true?’ 1 They are as separate as dream and waking
reality; and just as when we awake we do not take the trouble
to modify a dream, but entirely sublate it, so, when the true
knowledge arises, ‘the world of effects with the means and
objects of right knowledge and its results of action is untrue’. 3
In the same way, just as we look upon the crises of a dream as
harmless, so may we look upon the world of the ordinary in the
same kindly but intellectually lethargic way. ‘As long as true
knowledge does not present itself, there is no reason why the
ordinary course of secular and religious activity should not hold
on undisturbed .’3 No reason! And yet we are told that it is a far
country where the soul exists as an alien and a ‘wanderer’, and
it seems a pity that the soul should be so lightly permitted to
continue its wanderings.

Further, this abrupt separation leads to consequences which
are not all of them desirable. If there are two sharply distin¬
guished points of view, we shall very likely be tempted to think
that difficulties which arise from one point of view maybe disre¬
garded while we flee unconcernedly to the other. Mr. D. N. Pal

1 S.B.E. XXXIV. 323. ‘Ib. 324. 3 lb. 324.

ii8 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

unconsciously suggests a danger of this kind when he tells us
that ‘Sankara has found a wonderful way out’. Of course to
deny the validity of certain groups of disconcerting conclusions
by pointing out that the procedure by which we arrive at these
conclusions is unnecessary or mistaken, is simply another way
of saying that the conclusions are not ultimately satisfactory.
But, all the same, an effort to deal directly with the particular
difficulties which the empirical conclusions leave unresolved
would give an impression of greater philosophical courage,
whilst, on the other hand, the method of escape, with slightly
contemptuous backward glance, is apt to encourage a certain
laissez-faire attitude to the difficulties left behind. The higher
point of view becomes so detached from the lower that it is
unable by its insistent truthfulness to force the latter to yield up
a solution of its contradictions. If the lower knowledge is de¬
spised as being on the level of dream-experiences, we become
disposed to leave it alone in its confusions. If we dream of a
man with two heads, we do not trouble when we awake to point
out that such a monstrosity is impossible on physiological
grounds. We simply dismiss it as a dream, and leave it alone
with the truth which it had as an actual element in the dream
experience. In this way the standard is lowered, and we are
compelled to admit an element of truth in Puroshottama
Misra’s rather cynical remark, ‘in this system, which maintains
that everything transcends explanation, unreasonableness is no
objection’. 1 Things may be accepted as true up to a certain
point and left there. Although we have a vague feeling that they
are not wholly true, we do not trouble to challenge the half-
truth we have already got and compel it to yield up the fuller
truth. In the language of logic we might say that the separation
we are considering forces us to use a hypothesis which is con¬
tinually changing its ground, and thus failing to conform to the
rules of a good hypothesis. A hypothesis, if it is to be considered
legitimate, should not be employed on one level and then, be¬
cause of the greater difficulties in which it involves us, altogether
abandoned on a higher level while still permitted to be valid on
the lower. It should be carried through and tested by its
adequacy in dealing with the whole situation. Yet Soankara’s
1 Quoted in Goreh’s Rational Refutation, 355.

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE 119

argument against the Buddhists, while to a large extent its
logical consistency may be upheld, is not wholly free from
objections of this sort. And for the same reason we may also
have to view somewhat critically certain implications of his
doctrine of Maya, and also the argument by which he seeks to
prove that God is not responsible for the disconcerting evil of
the world.

There is another unfortunate consequence. The conception
of the negative and indescribable character of ultimate reality
is often the outcome of that desperate search for a mysterious
and elusive substance beyond qualities of which Prof. Pringle-
Pattison has so well shown the futility in his Idea of God .
Sankara is right in his contention that scientific knowledge must
fail in such a quest, but his method conceals both from himself
and from others the true conclusion that the quest is really a
hopeless one. He rather suggests that, though such a reality
cannot be reached on the empirical level, it may be reached by
the higher knowledge. The empirical investigator is practically
told that he has failed because he has been searching in the
wrong place and not because he has been searching for the
wrong thing. He is prevented from discovering for himself the
barrenness of the mystical substance for which he is searching
by having it suggested to him that he should leave the inquiry
to that higher knowledge to which he has not yet attained. And,
in addition to this, the higher knowledge also encourages him
in his abstract view, for there is associated with it the idea of
vagueness rather than of definiteness, and even he who has
attained to it has to be content with the abstract and the negative
and the undefined. He is not encouraged to press onwards in
the quest for an ultimate unity which will provide an explanation
of the empirical variety of the world. He is apt to fall into the
error of those who, as Prof. Laird puts it, ‘mistake a useless
spectre for the last word in profundity, and often advance the
extraordinary doctrine that truth is an incomprehensible reality,
while the thing that we know is a comprehensible unreality’. 1

Although it may be true, as Prof. K. Shastri so frequently
points out in his book upon the Adwaita Philosophy, that
Sankara’s aim was to show that the details of the world are
1 Idea of ' the Soul, 60.

120

THE ULTIMATE UNITY

nothing apart from Brahman, the separation between the two
orders of knowledge compels Sankara to run the serious risk of
coming to the conclusion that they are nothing at all. And the
vagueness of the apprehension of unity with the undifferenced
Brahman which the higher knowledge affords, is apt to make us
forget that the goal of philosophy is to discover the infinitely
transcendent source of all things which will at once give them
reality and explain them. The procedure we have been studying
is rather a temptation to turn the true ideas of the ‘infinite 5 and
the ‘inexhaustible 5 into the ‘inaccessible 5 . Vagueness has re¬
ceived a benediction through being connected with a higher
order of knowledge.

Further, when we are thus left in presence of the merely
characterless and abstract, we find it difficult to maintain
spiritual conceptions in their requisite purity. Physical concep¬
tions, which, in general, philosophy has to make constant
efforts to transcend, reassert themselves. We become less
aware of and less appreciative of the importance of the activity
of consciousness. Our desire indeed is-—if at this level we can
still have desires—to rise to something higher than conscious¬
ness, but the danger is that, in presence of this vague ultimate
which we have detached from experience, we may fall below,
instead of rise above, the level of consciousness and reach unity
by way of the unconscious. Intense and concentrated contem¬
plation is no doubt the ideal which Sankara has in view, but
we cannot help feeling that, in common with all mystics, as
Prof. Pringle-Pattison has pointed out, he is to some extent
inclined first of all to treat contemplation as very nearly equi¬
valent to absorption, and then to give to the latter term a
meaning derived from observation of the mixture of physical
substances and fluids.

There are evidences even within the bounds of the Vedanta
philosophy that this abrupt separation between the two orders
of knowledge did not always satisfy. Sankara himself, as we
shall immediately see, did not persistently maintain what Prof.
Radhakrishnan has described as his ‘ultra-philosophicalmoods 5 .
Ever and again he turned his thoughts back again to the con¬
sideration of the multiplicity of the world. The philosophy of
Ramanuja is, of course, based upon a denial of this separation.

121

THE TWO ORDERS OF KNOWLEDGE
And surely it remains true that we can best preserve what is
valuable in the doctrine of higher knowledge by showing that
such knowledge is the completion and not the negation of lower
knowledge. It ought to signify simply the wider conclusions in
which the contradictions of the empirical are resolved. Intui¬
tion is the supplement of intellect and fills up what is lacking in
the somewhat unsatisfactory conclusions of the latter. Reality
is reached, not by turning away from experience, but by fuller
and more reverent study of the facts with which it supplies us,
just as in ethical endeavour the ideal is approached through the
f ulfilm ent, of ordinary duties. There is much truth in Prof.
Bertrand Russell’s saying that ‘in contemplation we start from
the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of the
Self are enlarged’ (.Problems of Philosophy , 246). Even the sym¬
bols of imagination and worship are not to be taken as pure
fiction or as meaningless, but rather as more or less valuable
hints of truth. The distinction which we have been considering
serves us best if we allow it to deepen our reverence, but not to
increase our distrust of our own powers. We should like to take
it as ultimately expressive of the spirit of the beautiful passage
in which Coleridge tells us that all knowledge begins and ends
with wonder, but we have to replace the first wonder, which is
the child of ignorance, by the larger wonder which is the parent
of adoration. 1

In our next chapter we shall have to deal with some of the
mediating conceptions by means of which Sankara and other
Vedantins strive to soften the rigours of their negations and
introduce some definiteness into the vagueness of their abstrac¬
tions. But this chapter may appropriately close with some
further reference to Sankara’s views as to the efficacy of works
in introducing us to the higher knowledge. We have touched
slightly upon this topic in connexion with the preliminary con¬
ditions of philosophic study, but something may be gained by
bringing it into relation with the nature of the knowledge in
which deliverance consists, and especially its detachment from
the lower kind of knowledge. Sankara’s position is that, by the
very nature of the case, works, seeing that they belong to that
1 Quoted in Religions of the Empire, 412.

122 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

sphere of experience which has to be transcended, can have
very little direct efficacy in the securing of our salvation. As he
puts it in his Commentary on the first of the Sutras : ‘The know¬
ledge of active religious duty has for its fruit transitory felicity,
and that again depends on the performance of religious acts.
The inquiry into Brahman on the other hand, has for its fruit
eternal bliss, and does not depend on the performance of any
act.’ 1 The whole conception of activity, as ordinarily under¬
stood, is alien to the sphere of the higher knowledge. Action
has to do with what has not yet come into existence, whereas
knowledge, and especially the knowledge of Brahman, has to do
with something already existent. It is concerned, not with that
which is to be, but with that which eternally is. Works have
their relation to the transmigratory sphere, where the category
of cause and effect is applicable. Further, on the subjective
side, it is exceedingly difficult to dissociate from ritual works,
and indeed from works of any kind, the idea of merit, which
moves through the degrees of more or less, tending now in the
direction of pleasure and now in that of pain, and alternating
between the moods of hope and fear. But there is no place for
such degrees in association with the kind of knowledge which
brings release. Inasmuch as it is the knowledge of that which
in itself is not susceptible of increase of decrease, the knowledge
also is either there or not there. It is immediate, and it is wholly
inappropriate to regard it as the gradual acquisition of repeated
endeavour. Moreover, every action is a finite cause which can
have only a finite and, therefore, temporary, effect; but, on the
other hand, ‘that release is something eternal, is acknowledged
by whoever admits it at all, and the teaching concerning Brah¬
man can therefore not be merely supplementary to actions.’ 3

Nor is the case for action improved, according to Sankara, if
we take it in its purely intellectual aspect, and argue that, be¬
cause release is the result of action, therefore it must involve
mental activity. To such a contention Sankara would reply that
the knowledge which is active belongs to that lower order in
which the object is still distinguished from the subject. We are
active in knowledge, according to Sankara, only when we dis¬
regard his fundamental warning and attempt to treat the Self
* S.B.E. XXXIV. ii. * S. B. E. XXXIV. 29.

THE PLACE OF WORKS 123

as an Object. We should rather fall back upon that form of
realization which is deeper than active knowledge, and which
follows the spirit of the Kena Upanishad II. 3, where it is said,
‘By whom it is not thought, by him it is thought, by whom it is
thought, he does not know it; unknown by those who know it,
it is known by those who do not know it.’ Such contemplation
as is here indicated, is certainly not active in the ordinary sense,
although we must not rule out the possibility of its implying a
transcendental activity in the form of intense concentration,
aliveness, or awareness.

But even if, returning to the practical sphere, we confine our
attention to action of the highest moral character, we cannot
say, according to Sankara, that releasing knowledge results from
this. The Self which even the most elevated action serves to
purify, is only the empirical Self, whereas the Self which we
wish to attain in the consummation of salvation, is the un¬
changeable Self, which can only be realized, and cannot be im¬
proved by the addition of good qualities or the removal of
defects. Action of even the highest kind is meant to alter the
soul, and the Self cannot be altered. Further, although we may
be aware of the binding and individualizing effect of many
actions, and, because of this awareness, may seek deliverance by
emphasizing actions of social tendency, even this will not be
sufficient. Actions of service and sacrifice certainly loosen the
bonds of the merely selfish Self, and may derive their inspiration
from a consciousness of the identity of the Self in us with the
Self in other men, but they will lead to deliverance only by
extension of the Self, whereas what we seek is that deliverance
which depends on greater intensiveness—on deepening rather
than broadening. We may unite ourselves more closely with
our fellows, we may perfect our relations with them in every
respect, and as a result may go far towards founding a kingdom
of God upon earth, but such a kingdom will still be only earthly,
and our connexion with it will still be a bondage of the spirit.
We may become perfect instruments for the good of the com¬
munity, but we shall be instruments still. And we as children
of the eternal cannot work with whole-hearted enthusiasm for
ends which are constituted even by ideal social relationship.
Such conceptions of a perfect society, it must be remembered,

124 the ultimate unity

vary from age to age and are different in every nation, and there¬
fore, even a complete identification with the ideals of a particular
age or a particular society cannot give us eternal release, based
upon absolutely universal conditions.

Such, in general, is Sankara’s position as regards the fruit of
works. ‘Knowledge, having once spmng up, requires no help
towards the accomplishment of its fruit.’ But we should be
doing an injustice to his school of thought if we did not point
out that he assigns at least a subordinate value to works. Indeed
the very sentence from which we have just quoted concludes
with the words, ‘but it does stand in need of something else
with a view to its own origination .’ 1 It is only selfish works
which are entirely useless; all other works may be regarded as
indirectly, though not directly, serviceable for salvation. They
purify the mind, they strengthen our control of the passions,
they induce that calmness and collectedness which are the neces¬
sary conditions of the vision of the true Self. They are, in
short, as has been pointed out, ascetic rather than meritorious
in their effect. They may remove the hindrances which stand
in the way of perfect knowledge, that knowledge which is alone
efficacious. Even if they cannot secure the origination of this
knowledge in anyone particular life, they may so assemble condi¬
tions that it will of necessity arise in an immediately subsequent
life. But, notwithstanding all these concessions, it must be
clearly understood, according to Sankara, that, whatever may be
the subordinate value of works, they are never to be regarded as
ends in themselves. If they are so regarded, bondage either for
the individual or the community will be the inevitable result.

In his Commentaries on some of the Upanishads, Sankara
speaks of four stages in the life of man. With the first, which is
under the rule of lawless impulse, and with the second, which
is constituted by unintelligent observance of ritual, he concerns
himself little. The third stage, however, unites knowledge and
works of a higher order, and it may be said that Sankara’s chief
endeavour is to show that the combination is not absolutely
necessary, and that knowledge alone may be sufficient. When
works have been performed so as to secure the purification of
the soul, there is no further need of them. As he says in his
1 S. B. E. XXXVIII. 317.

THE PLACE OF WORKS 125

Commentary on Sutra III. 4. 14, ‘To a man who knows, no
work will cling, should he perform works during his whole life
even, owing to the power of knowledge. And this clearly
glorifies knowledge/ 1 Co-operation between jnana and karma
is necessary only as a preparatory discipline, and the enlightened
man will be free from the fetters of both good and evil works.
The moralistic standpoint will be altogether transcended. The
point of view is in striking contrast to that which, e.g., is ex¬
pressed by Solovyof, who says, ‘Asceticism in itself is not
necessarily good, and cannot therefore be the supreme or abso¬
lute principle of morality. The true (the moral) ascetic acquires
control over the flesh, not simply for the sake of increasing the
power of the spirit, but for furthering the realization of the
good/ 2

But with Sankara both good and evil works disappear when
the true knowledge arises. He would have been content with
the first statement of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that ‘all
who worship what is not knowledge enter into blind darkness 5 ,
and if his attention had been directed to the succeeding phrase,
‘Those who delight in knowledge enter, as it were, into greater
darkness, 5 he would have immediately replied, as we have seen
above, that the knowledge which is here referred to, is the lower
knowledge only, and that the passage taken as a whole gives no
suggestion of disparagement of the true knowledge which is
all-sufficient in itself. Salvation is of faith through knowledge,
or is the result of that knowledge whose similarity to faith we
indicate by calling it intuition. With St. Paul he would have
held that the doing of the works of the law cannot bring salva¬
tion, but, as Deussen points out, Sankara did not hold that the
law could not be fulfilled, but rather that, granted its fulfilment,
it would even then be fulfilled only from egoistic motives and
would therefore be void of effect in the direction of release.
He would hardly have agreed with Prof. B. K. Shastri that
‘a simultaneous training in duties and devotion qualifies a man
for absolute concentration on the Supreme Soul which leads
directly to eternal self-realization or liberation 5 . 3

The question whether this lands us in an antinomian position

1 S. B. E. XXXVII. 294.

3 Solovyof, The Justification of the Good , 57.

3 B. K. Shastri, 77.

126 THE ULTIMATE UNITY

will be further considered when we come to treat of the ethical
effect of the Vedanta, but in the meantime it may be sufficient
to point out that an unqualified imputation of antinomianism
would be unjust. In the first place, while Sankara indeed de¬
precates activity, it must be recognized that his ultimate know¬
ledge is of such a character as to contain within itself an activity
of a higher order, not the progressive activity of ordinary works
or even of ordinary knowledge, but of intense concentration
and awareness. It has, moreover, to be repeated again and again,
as Sankara brings out very explicitly in his Commentary on
Sutra IV. i. i. 1

In the second place, while the enlightened sage may ‘live as
he pleases’, and good and evil works are theoretically equally
indifferent to him, there may be in this a suggestion that he is
above the moral law, not in the sense that he may despise it, but
in the sense that he has absorbed it into himself, has overcome
its externality, and fulfils it in that spirit of artistic carelessness
which is really the highest carefulness. But whether this inter¬
pretation of the sage’s attitude is admitted or not, it is hardly
to be thought that one who has realized the value of good works
as a necessary propaedeutic, will not continue practically a
preference for them over evil works. He will surely still feel, at
least in his less stringently philosophical moods, that the health
of his soul in its highest spiritual realization is not altogether
dissociated from the continuing performance of these good
works.

From an ethical point of view, as we shall see more fully
later, the most serious consequence of Sankara’s position is
connected with his depreciation of the enduring value of works
of social service and self-sacrifice. A certain want of enthusiasm
at least for such works would seem to be inseparable from his
general theoretical position. Ultimately, he regards them as
forging new fetters, and he seems to be unable to accept the
view that while not ends in themselves, they may be ends for
the Kingdom of God. Because he has so completely detached
earth from God, he cannot make use of a conception of the
kingdom of God upon earth. Deussen seems to think that this
is a matter of little consequence. He says, ‘Whether this meta-
1 Cf. S. B. E. XXXVIII. 332.

THE PLACE OF WORKS 127

physical consciousness, which lifts us above the world . . . leads
over into Quietism ... or is realized in deeds of love, touches
only its form of appearance and establishes no difference in the
value of what appears here/ 1

There does seem to us to be a most important difference in
value, and in place of accepting this transcendental equalization
and indifference, we prefer to draw attention, as Prof. Tattva-
bhushan does, to a concession which Sankara himself is inclined
to make. In his Commentary on the eleventh verse of the
second chapter of the Gita, he allows that the performance of
duties for the good of the world by Sri Krishna and others was
not incompatible with even the highest knowledge. 2 We
are inclined to think that such an admission may be symbolic of
a feeling that the world of ordinary duties and service, temporal
though it may be, is not ultimately to be completely detached
from the eternal reality. We shall find that such a feeling finds
fuller expression in Sankara’s doctrine of Maya to which we
must now turn.

1 Deussen, S. V. 424.

3 Cf. Tattvabhushan in Three Great Acharyas, 101.

THE DOCTRINE OF MAY A AND AVIDYA . RELA¬
TION TO KANT. THE GOD OF QUALITIES

‘HpHE eye reaches it not, speech reaches it not, thought

-U- reaches it not—from the dim and mysterious distance
which this verse suggests how can we return to a realistic inter¬
pretation of that world of ordinary experience with which after
all we have to concern ourselves ? This is the difficulty which
constantly presents itself to all students of the Vedanta and in¬
deed of Indian philosophy generally, and it was a difficulty of
which Sankara himself was ever and again poignantly aware.
Under his guidance we may have floated upwards from the
lower knowledge to the higher, we may have reached that
mystical union with the characterless Absolute which he indi¬
cates as the goal of all our philosophical and religious searching,
and which constitutes our salvation, but under the pressure of
experience we have to come back again to that world from which
we have so painfully detached ourselves and which we still find
cannot be left out of consideration. As Deussen says, 'We
demand from the philosopher as from the empiric investigator,
a full interest in the visible world and its wonderful phenomena,
only that he must see them with other eyes than the empiric/ 1
That Sankara himself is aware of the insistence of such a
demand is obvious from his placing the two orders of knowledge
side by side and from his giving at least subordinate recognition
to the lower; and, though his interest in the wonderful pheno¬
mena of nature and humanity cannot be called ‘full’, he is at
least not prepared to leave the empirical world suspended un¬
certainly in the philosophic void.

He relies for connexion and explanation on the term Maya
with all the implications of this elusive conception. Maya is the
m ysterious power which, through undefinable assodiaSdirwitE
ffie~Absolute, turns the non-qualitative Brah man into the
qualitative^ manifested, is

ffansfor^ ai|'ocean of auspicious qualities’. From one

point of view these Equalities are 'limiting adjuncts’ (upadhis),
but from another point of view they are the seminal forces of

1 Deussen. S. V. 81.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 129

the universe. Brahman, as qualitative, is the sum-total of the
upadhis , and the world of nature and human spirits is their
manifestation, and constitutes the body of Brahman and the
concrete revelation of his being. Mdyd is the principle of indi¬
viduation and the fullest explanation we can give of the visible
universe in all the variety of its ‘names and forms’ and the
opportunities it presents for the existence and responsible
activities of mankind.

We may notice two particular directions of the activity of
Mdyd. Through the power of envelopment (dvarana) it pro¬
duces the idea of individualized Self-hood, and through the
power of projection (viksepa) it produces all the phenomena of
the external world. Or, as it has been put, ignorance has both
The power of obstruction by which it hides from our view the
real nature of things, and the power of development by which
it gives to airy nothing a habitation and a name’. 1 Another
Indian writer avails himself usefully of the conception of
‘polarization’. ‘Mdyd is the divine power which manifests
itself in various ways, but the nature of its operation has this
constant characteristic that it brings about diversity (bheda) out
of unity (abheda); the opposition which it sets up between the
subject and the object may be compared to the action of a mag¬
netic force which- lets off opposite kinds of magnetism at the
two poles of a magnet.’ *

And yet, even if we are to admit the existence of mdyd, we
must, according to Sankara, hold firmly to the contrast between
it and the absolute Source from which it springs—to the con¬
trast between the non-qualitative and the qualitative, the infinite
and the finite, the changeless and the changing, the imperish¬
able and the perishable, the invisible and the visible, the unity
and the manifold. If we indeed permit ourselves to turn
towards the world of experience, we must always remember
that our steps are leading us downwards. We may seek to know
the world in which we live ; but after all, for the sake of this
knowledge, we have to leave behind-—and sacrifice—the incog¬
nizable Reality; and that which cannot be known through the
ordinary forms of cognition^emains the ultimate foundation of

1 Pundit K. N. Tarkabagisa.

* P. N. Sen, Philosophy of the Vedanta , 116.

K

I 3 0 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYl

all things. Thus a sense of depreciation attends us even as we
set out upon our quest for a solution of the problems of the
world.

This sense may lie hidden in that interpretation which is so
often given to the conception of maya> by which it is taken to be
the equivalent of ‘illusion 5 . We consider that it is entirely wrong
to accept this interpretation in a crude and literal sense, and
without some kind of qualification. There is a wealth of signifi¬
cance in the conception of maya which the English word
‘illusion 5 does not by any means fully express, and the precise
degree of suitability which attaches to the translation requires
considerable investigation. But before we undertake any critical
analysis we may trace the growth of the maya. conception itself
and indicate generally Sankara’s own use of the term.

In the earliest usage, as far back as the Rigveda , the root idea
associated with the term would seem to be the wonderful power
of the gods, through the operation of which they display a
wisdom far transcending our ordinary experience or faculties
of comprehension. But with the idea of the wonderful the idea
of the mysterious is combined, and by a further not unnatural
transition of thought, the idea of the mysterious may be trans¬
formed into the idea of the deceptive. In our attempts to grasp
what is beyond the reach of our faculties, we inevitably make
mistakes; but mistakes for which we are not willing to shoulder
the responsibility, come to be regarded as attempts on the part
of others to deceive us. Our inability to apprehend the gods
adequately has as its natural counterpart an intention on the
part of the gods to mislead us. And we entertain this slightly
malign idea of deception all the more easily if, as was the case
in Rigvedic times, religious belief attaches itself to two sets of
gods, one of which is benevolent and the other malevolent. A
mysterious supernatural power the exercise of which is con¬
ceivably beneficent is ascribed to the good gods, whereas the
mistakes which we make and the practical blunders which work
our misery are ascribed to the evil gods, and appear as maleficent
powers belonging to the latter. A firm association thus grows
up between the idea of divine power and the idea of deception,
and when once the association is formed it is not easily broken. 1

1 Cf. P, D. Shastri, io and Happel, Grundanschauung der Inder , 88.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 131

In fact as the idea of mystery deepens and terror darkens the
originally familiar relations between men and gods in Rigvedic
times, new scope is found for the working of the idea of decep¬
tion, inasmuch as what a man fears he hates, and what he hates
he is inclined to interpret malevolently. Hence, when the idea
of the supernatural is so strongly emphasized as it is in the latest
of the Vedas—the Atharvaveda —it is not by any means sur¬
prising that the idea of magic or deceptive illusion should
become increasingly prevalent:

We shall find that all attempts to describe the character of
mayd have to face the difficulty of deciding whether it is to be
regarded as Being or non-Being, sat or asat. The implications
of this alternative will require later treatment, but in the mean¬
time we may use the contrast as an indication of the course of
historical development. From the ordinary naive point of view
the actual is the real—everything else is asat, mysterious, un¬
real, uncanny. But as the sense of mystery deepens, and philo¬
sophical interest develops and becomes more penetrating, the
supersensible acquires greater importance than the sensible.
The former becomes the real—the truly real—and the facts and
events of ordinary experience become attenuated into the veils
which hide reality from us. They in turn are now the asat, the
dreamlike, the fictitious, constituting the world of appearance,
almost the realm of illusion. The philosopher has indeed come
to £ see with other eyes than the empiric 5 , and what the latter
calls sat , he calls asat , The fluidity of the distinction between
the real and the unreal, and the interchange of characters, recalls
the definition in the Platonic philosophy of opinion, which has
been described as 'something lying between the purely existent
and the absolutely non-existent—something more dusky than
knowledge, but more luminous than ignorance 5 . 1 -

Our present purpose does not require us to trace the his¬
torical process in further detail. Sankara, it has been pointed
out, does not obtain much support for a rigorous doctrine of
maya from the Vedanta Sutras, and, in reference to their sources
in the Upanishads, there is a good deal to be said for the conten¬
tion of Colebrooke, Cowell, and Dr. Barnett, that these favour

. 1 For an excellent description of the relation between sat and asat, cf.
Kirtikar, Studies in Vedanta, 191.

i 3 2 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

a realistic interpretation of the universe and that the maya doc¬
trine is not to be found explicitly in them. Yet, on the other
hand, it cannot be gainsaid that there are implicit suggestions
of the doctrine from the very beginning of the Upanishad
development. Deussen regards the conception as being the
necessary complement of the doctrine of the sole reality of the
Atman, which, according to him, is the fundamental teaching
of even the oldest Upanishads; and it may be argued that
Sankara gives on the whole the true interpretation of the ulti¬
mate position taken up by the Upanishads in face of the diffi¬
culties of reconciling the manifold unity and the finite with the
infinite. To Sankara’s own position we must now turn.

He certainly does not, in his language at least, guard with any
great care against an extreme illusory interpretation. In his
Commentary on Sutra I. 3. 19 he tells us that the one highest
Lord 'manifests himself in various ways, just as a thaumaturge
appears in different shapes by means of his magical power’. 1
In I. 4. 3 he asserts plainly that the causal potentiality ‘is of the
nature of an illusion’. 2 And the entire effect of this potentiality
is ‘a figment of nescience’, and the ‘germs of the entire expanse
of the phenomenal world are the result of illusion’. 3 Still more
emphatic is he in his Commentary on II. 1. 23, ‘This entire
apparent world, in which good and evil actions are done, is a
mere illusion, and does in reality exist not at all’. 4 Also in the
retractation of the world which he has evolved, the supreme
Lord preserves the detachment and indifference of the magician.
All effects, according to the Vedantic view, are but illusory
appearances of the cause. .The changes which attract our notice
are but vivartavada changes, and not parinamavada, the former
term indicating a less degree of actual effectuation than the
latter. According to Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, ‘the former implies
an illusive development and the latter real development.’ 3
Sankara combines this idea of vivartavada changes with the
doctrine, repeatedly stated by him, that cause and effect are
identical, and, when confronted with the objection that, if this
is so, the cause will be affected by the evils and defects of the
world, he cites first of all the analogy of the clay remaining

B. E. XXXIV. 190. 3 lb. 243 3 Cf. Sutra II. 1. 14.

4 S.B.E. XXXIV. 345. 5 Vaishnavism , 160,

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 133

unaffected finally by the form of the particular vessels made
out of it, but bases his main defence upon the contention that
the evolution has not after all been real. His conclusion upon
the question is that just ‘as the magician is not affected at any
time by the magical illusion produced by himself, because it is
unreal, so the highest Self is not affected by the world-illusion’. 1
Such passages would certainly seem to support very strongly
the interpretation of illusion, and many writers accept this
meaning unhesitatingly and without qualification. Usually it
is against non-Indian writers that the charge of precipitancy in
this respect is brought, but some Indian writers are equally
ready to accept this view. Prof. Prabhu Dutt Shastri, e.g., says,
Tt is true beyond doubt that Sankara means by Maya nothing
but illusion.’* And Prof. S. N. Das Gupta is of much the same
opinion, Tn Sankara the word Maya is used in the sense of
illusion, both as a principle of creation, as a sakti (power) or
accessory cause, and as the phenomenal creation itself, as the
illusion of world-app earance. ’ 3
! The impression of detachment from all effects of the magical
power is strengthened when we take into consideration the
motive which is ascribed to the highest Lord in the creation of

e cosmic illusion. This is a corollary of the accepted doctrine
of salvation; for if salvation is to consist in a realization of the
ephemeral character of the world rather than in submission to
a rigid system of inexorable laws, then it is obvious that a similar
freedom and light-heartedness must be attributed to the Lord
who exercises the magical power. There must be, as Max
Muller points out, a considerable degree of self-forgetfulness. 4
The Creator cannot be conceived of as labouring from a sense
of need or for the accomplishment of any serious purpose. He
needs nothing, he aims at nothing. J Rather is he like the child
of sportive impulse, blowing bubbles lovely as the rainbow but
no more lasting. Or he is like a mighty prince of satiated desire,
who yet must find some amusement to relieve the tedium of the
passing hour.|

Now at first sight this might seem to be a wholly frivolous
conception, and it has, as such, been subjected to much hostile

* S, B . E. XXXIV. 312.
3 Das Gupta, I. 470.

3 P. D. Shastri, 26.

4 Cf. Muller, S. S. 185.

i 3 4 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

criticism. But we venture to think that a good deal of this
criticism is undeserved. The conception may be wanting in
depth, and it may be allowed that it would only be possible for
one in whom the tendency to depreciate the world system was
already strongly marked. But at the same time it at least hints
at ideas of considerable philosophical importance. It may be
an attempt to deal in a symbolic way with the difficulty of con¬
necting the idea of purpose with the Absolute, a problem which
occupies much space in the writings of Lotze and is one of the
most important topics in Prof. Pringle-Pattison’s Idea of God .
Further, the thought of play is not far removed from the idea
of the exercise of energy without strain, as in the healthful
rhythm of breathing, or from the idea of effortless growth
towards perfection. 'Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you,
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these/ 1 A recent writer in the Hibbert Journal emphasizes the
idea that play is as important as work in the evolutionary process,
and urges us to realize the kinship of recreation to creation. 3
An allied idea appears very frequently in the writings of Dr.
Rabindranath Tagore, who holds that joy is of the essence of
the divine nature and that we should approach more nearly to
the secrets of the origin of the world if we would assign greater
importance to the idea of creative imagination.

In any case, whatever general philosophic import we may
assign to it, the idea of Ilia, or ‘sport’, can be rightly estimated
only if we take it in connexion with the anti-realistic tendency
of Sankara’s whole system. If the conception seems sometimes
to work out into a cold indifference to the sufferings of humanity,
yet our sense of fitness is not offended to the same extent as in
a more realistic system. We might conceive of Sankara as saying
in reference to suffering, Tt is not, and therefore does not
matter,’ whereas a more realistic thinker would have to say, Tt
is, and yet it does not matter.’ A statement such as the following
from the more realistically inclined Vedantist, Ramanuja, is
much more disconcerting than if it had emanated from a )

1 Matthew vi. 28.

* Art. ‘The Spirit of PlayV by Greville Macdonald, Hibbert Journal,
Jan. 1923.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 135
thoroughgoing anti-realist like Sankara: ‘To the soul, therefore,
which is subject to karman, the connexion with different things
is a source of imperfection and suffering; while to the highest
Brahman, which is subject to itself only, the same connexion is
the source of playful sport.’ 1

But, in order to gain a more complete understanding of the
conception of may a, it is necessary to proceed to an analysis of
a term which has been left too long out of account, viz. avidya,
or Nescience. For the purposes of his refutation of Buddhistic
subjectivism Sankara adopted provisionally the ordinary em¬
pirical belief in an external world, but later discarded such a
belief, in order to prepare the way for an assertion of the one
and only reality. He objected to the Buddhistic view that our
experience is independent of external data; but he adopts also
the position that the external data are themselves untrustworthy
and that unity alone exists. Psychologically, the motive for this
procedure of Sankara’s may have been a sense of the inadequacy
of our ordinary categories, and in respect of the agnosticism
which is implied in the word avidya, Sankara may be legitimately
regarded as a precursor of Kant, to whom he is repeatedly com¬
pared by most Indian writers and also by Deussen and Max
Muller. But, as the latter also points out, there is a considerable
difference between the ultimate view of Sankara and that of
Kant . 2 Sankara does not go so far as Kant in the analysis and
detailed subjedification of our mental forms and categories, but
his final attitude both to these forms and their products is much
more negative. At first sight Kant seems, e.g., to take a more
subjective view of space than Sankara. With Kant space is a
mental form, although, indeed, by reason of its necessity and
universality it may approach objectivity. With Sankara, on the
other hand, space is objective in an empirical sense—]|he doc¬
trine of its being a nonentity is untenable,’^and ‘substantiality
can be established in the case of space’.? But' when we consider
the matter further, we find that this ascription of objectivity
falls wholly within Sankara’s provisional refutation of Buddhism,
and therefore cannot be taken as his ultimate position. Space
turns out to be merely a reality within an unreality. Sankara is

• S. B. E. XLVIII. 610. * Cf. Muller, S. S. 173.

3 Cf. Sutra II. 2. 24.

136 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYl

more realistic than Kant only provisionally, but much less
realistic ultimately. In his attitude to experience taken as a
whole Sankara approaches much more nearly to a negative
position. Therefore those who adopt the illusory interpretation
of Sankara’s teaching—whether they are correct or not in this
acceptance—cannot defend it by identifying it with the position
of Kant. It is a mistake to state the relation between the two
orders of knowledge in the Vedanta philosophy, as interpreted
by Sankara, as simply equivalent to the Kantian relation
between phenomena and noumena. The phenomenal and the
illusory have by no means the same philosophical value, and in
using the latter term Sankara says much more than is implied in
Kant’s use of the former. In other words, Sankara is not merely
agnostic; he is also condemnatory. As regards the results of our
use of the categories it would be just to represent Kant as saying,
‘This, though not very much, is the best we can do,’ whereas
Sankara would seem to prefer to say, ‘This is the worst we can
do,’ or, ‘This is what we should not do at all, if we desire the
highest wisdom.’. {According to the latter it is not merely that
our knowledge fails but that it does not deserve to succeed,
because it is on the wrong lines. Kant again would admit the
validity of the intellectual activities which give rise to the cate¬
gories, and would lament only that they do not succeed in un¬
locking the door of the mysteries. Sankara, on the other hand,
would be inclined to hold that these activities are wrong in
principle and that they do not only fail to unlock the door into
the real world, but considerably spoil the lock. Further, Kant,
however inconsistent this may be with his strict doctrine tha t
causality holds only amongst phenomena, would yet admit tha t
things in themselves are the sources of sense-experience even
though not revelatory of themselves in these experiences, where¬
as Sankara would urge that there is no distributed reality which
could possibly be even the remote cause of sensational experience.
Identification on this point, therefore, of the Vedantic with the
Kantian philosophy would seem to be to a large extent misleading.

It would be interesting to ask whether, if Sankara had written
a ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ from his own point of view, he
would have left room, as Kant did, for a ‘Critique of Practical
Reason’? A consideration of the classical passage in the Com-

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 137

mentary on Sutra II. 1. 14 would seem to afford material for an
affirmative answer. Here Sankara says, £ The entire complex of
phenomenal existence is considered as true as long as the know¬
ledge of Brahman being the Self of all has not arisen. . . . As
long as true knowledge does not present itself, there is no reason
why the ordinary course of secular and religious activity should
not hold on undisturbed.’ 1 But while there is a surface similarity
here, the fundamental attitudes of the two thinkers are very
different from one another. According to Kant, the activities of
the practical reason will afford a true access to the deepest
reality, whereas, according to Sankara, practical activities in
general are purely provisional; they are operations springing
from a darkened understanding and should for the most part
be disregarded as soon as the light of true knowledge dawns.
That this introduces a most important difference in our total
attitude to practical activity will be obvious. The distinction
is made clear by Solovyof, who points out that,; while mere
doubt about objective reality would have no effect "upon moral
activity, dogmatic certainty as to non-existence would certainly
have such an effect to a very considerable degree. 2

Having thus considered a possible affiliation between San¬
kara’s doctrine of avidya y or nescience, and the Kantian philo¬
sophy, and having seen that the similarity has been greatly
overestimated, we may now return to Sankara’s own develop¬
ment of the conception. We have found that ultimately, and
perhaps mainly on religious grounds and with a view to the
winning of spiritual freedom/he is disposed to assert the un¬
reality of ordinary experience. At the same time in his criticism
of Buddhism he has shown his opposition to particularistic
subjectivity, or, in other words, his unwillingness to saddle the
individual with the whole responsibility for the wrong know¬
ledge in which ignorance consists. An attempt to reconcile the
two positions throws considerable light upon the peculiar
character of his doctrine of nescience. Although he might not
use modern terms, and although our purpose is simply to show
the naturalness of the transitions in his thought and we do
not attempt to trace in exact details all the windings of his

1 S. B. E. XXXIV. 324.

3 Cf. Solovyof, Justification of the Good, 10.

x 3 8 DOCTRINE OF MAyA and avidyA

speculation, yet it may be said that Sankara was very evidently
aware of what modern psychologists would describe as the
results of intersubjective intercourse. He argues provisionally
for empirical realism on the grounds of common perception and
the impossibility of providing otherwise, or on the principles of
Buddhistic individualism, for the practical concerns of life. 1

Although a few Vedantists might approach such Buddhistic
individualism, yet, as Prof. S. N. Das Gupta points out, ‘in the
normal Vedantic view the objects of the world are existent as
phenomena. . . . The objective phenomena in themselves are of
course but modifications of ajnana, but still these phenomena
of the ajnana are there as the common ground for the experience
of all.’ 3 Sankara’s reasoning apparently is that, if we make mis¬
takes, other people make the same mistakes. Our ignorance is
a common ignorance, and the cause of it, therefore, must lie
somewhere beyond ourselves. But in universalizing our ignor¬
ance we are at the same time going far in the direction of objecti¬
fying it; we are passing from the view of ignorance as an erro¬
neous mental activity to a consideration of the objects presented
by that ignorance to us and to others. We thus evade subjective
and individual responsibility. We pass from the negation
usually implied by the word ‘ignorance’ to the more positive
idea of ‘false knowledge’, which again, be it carefully noticed, is
not a mere private possession. But the two seemingly incom¬
patible ideas of objectivity and unreliability can be held together
in the mind only if a principle of falsification can be posited as
the explanation of the false knowledge. Why not therefore, the
Vedantist philosopher asks, replace our subjective ignorance by
a cosmical ignorance and transform a psychological or epistemo¬
logical principle into a metaphysical one, a disability connected
with our human limitations into an ability to create a world ?
Let us conceive, urged Sankara, of a world-ignorance as well as
of an individual ignorance, and let us regard the world-ignorance
as so far positive as to be able to produce a phenomenal world.
Dr. Barnett traces the transition as evidenced in the individual
soul, ‘With Sankara and the later Vedanta it is a positive, a false
light, a constructive illusion.’ 3 Happel puts the matter more

1 Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV. 421 and 428. * Das Gupta, I. 478.

3 Brahma-Knowledge> 39*

DOCTRINE OF MlYA AND AVIDYA 139

objectively and universally. ‘The expression avidya, especially
if translated as Nescience, conceals the essence of the conception
for the negative expression leads us in a wrong direction, as if
the word signified something negative and indicated merely
defect. This is an error. Avidya is a mighty power, for through
it arise the upadhis, from which again come the aggregates of
names and forms and the instruments of our activity, and hence
also suffering, birth, death, age, sickness, and so on.’ 1 Thus the
same principle which is responsible for our subjective ignorance
may also be regarded as the explanation of that objective world
which we are supposed to know in the state of ignorance. Here
Sankara definitely diverges from Kant. The unreliability of
empirical knowledge is found to be due not to the inadequacy
of human faculties but to ‘the potency of an all-pervading prin¬
ciple of cosmic ignorance’. 3 To suppose a principle of this sort
is at once an acknowledgement of inexplicable mystery and a
disclaimer of any attempts at explanation. Ignorance is that
which because of its very nature cannot be understood. He who
would understand avidya has been compared to ‘a man who
should rush to see darkness by means of a far-shining torch’.
Moreover the idea of ignorance with its implications of mistake
and falsification carries our minds by a natural transition to the
idea of an illusory world. If there is a definite suggestion of
negation or of the unpermitted in the cause, it is much easier to
attach a similar suggestion to the product. Thus avidya and
maya have the closest possible affinity with each other.

Sankara indeed ascribes to avidya very much the same
functions as he assigns to maya. Avidya is the cause of the
samara, or aggregate of world phenomena. In the Commen¬
tary on Sutra I. 4. 3 the two ideas are combined. The causal
potentiality is of the ‘nature of nescience’, and also ‘of the nature
of an illusion’. In connexion with Sutra II. 1. 6 he speaks of the
‘fallacious superimpositions of nescience’, and in II. x. 4 he
speaks of name and form as ‘the presentations of nescience’, and
in II. 1.28 of nature as ‘a mere figment of nescience’. Avidya is
almost personified as a principle of creative error.

In general the connexion between avidya and maya is so close

1 Happel, Grundanschauung der Inder, 89.

a Frazer, Indian Thought, 88.

140 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

that it is difficult to distinguish between them. Thibaut is
inclined to identify them, and we have seen that Prof. Das
Gupta’s opinion is that in Sankara maya means both a principle
of creation and the result of this creation. 1 Deussen pre¬
fers to regard avidya as the causal principle and maya as the
effect. Avidya works by the ascription of upadhis> or ‘limiting
adjuncts’, and maya is the resulting totalization of these
upadhiSy inclusive of the ideas of a personal God, the world, and
individual souls. We find also occasionally a disposition to dis¬
tinguish between avidya and maya on grounds of valuation, the
product of the latter being regarded as having a more elevated
character than the former. If such views are correct, this just
means that avidya has not wholly detached itself from its indi¬
vidual and subjective origin, has not become altogether cosmical.
In a later passage Prof. Das Gupta points out that, according
to some Vedantists, may a is more distinctively the projective
creative force ( viksepa) and thrusts into embodiment the higher
attributes, whereas avidya is rather of the nature of a concealing
power (avarana), and is responsible for the less worthy attri¬
butes. Further, it is sometimes indicated that the pure intelli¬
gence of the Absolute in relation with maya produces first of all
Isvara, or the personal God, whilst in relation with avidya it
produces the individual soul. Too much stress, however, must not
be laid on these minute distinctions, seeing that the Vedantist
writers themselves do not always observe them, and for all prac¬
tical purpose avidya and maya may be taken as simply slightly
different ways of describing that mysterious power which pro¬
duces the more or less unreal world of ordinary experience.

Before going farther it is important that we should notice
exactly what degree of commitment to reality is involved in the
objectification of avidya. If, from being a merely epistemo¬
logical concept it is transformed into a metaphysical principle,
then its upholders must be ready to accept the consequences of
the transformation. They cannot continue to defend the con¬
ception against attack as if it were merely negative. Deussen
seems not to have observed this caution when he says that the
principle needs no explanation just because it is wholly negative,
and Prof. P. D. Shastri seems to fall into the same error in his
1 Op. tit.y p, 470.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 141

refutation of the criticisms passed by Ramanuja upon Sankara.
But you must choose between the epistemological and the
metaphysical treatment. You cannot treat avidyd , or mdyd r as
a principle of metaphysical explanation, and then run away
from criticism of it on the ground that it is simply the hypostasis
of error and has no true positive existence. It would seem to us
that Ramanuja is wholly justified in claiming that the concep¬
tion should be treated seriously and that those who use it should
not take refuge merely in its inexplicability. It may turn out
that they are right as regards its inexplicable character, but they
should not at one and the same time confess this inexplicability
and yet continue to use it as a metaphysical principle which,
just because of its inexplicability, is exempt from criticism. They
must do one thing or the other. Their principle is either some¬
thing or nothing. If it is nothing, it cannot be used to explain
the world. If it is something, it must be treated as a positive,
having sufficient character to stand investigation. Ramanuja’s
challenge to the stricter Vedantists seems to be that they cannot
be both agnostic and dogmatic. They must choose between the
two attitudes, and if they choose the latter they must abide
criticism. They must, further, show the relation of mdyd to
Brahman, they must resolve the contradiction between the pure
unity of the latter and the admission of a world-principle of
differentiation within his being. They must adjust the darken¬
ing power of mdyd to the pure self-luminousness of Brahman.
They must show how, if cause and effect are, as they say,
identical, Brahman, as reality, can be identical with that which
is illusory. If, finally, mdyd is real—even to the extent of being
used as an explanatory principle—it cannot be wholly sublated
by the higher knowledge which Sankara aims at, and therefore
the way of salvation prescribed by the rigorous monists turns
out to be deceptive. You may be wrong in taking nescience as
an explanatory principle rather than as an intellectual attitude.
But if you choose the former you must consider also the conse¬
quences. If ajnana is destroyable, it is not real, and if it is real,
it is not destroyable. Ramanuja points out that if nescience is
a part of the Atman which is Brahman, it cannot be sublated,
and adds that ‘knowledge cannot destroy a real thing’. 1 In
* Cf. S. B. E. XLVIII. 116.

142 DOCTRINE OF MAY A AND AVIDYA

short, the sum and substance of Ramanuja’s criticism is, Let
maya abide the question, or let it be abandoned as a meta¬
physical principle.

We seem forced to the conclusion that maya cannot abide the
question, if it is taken as a pure principle of illusion, giving rise
to an altogether fictitious world. Universal illusionism is impos¬
sible. Mr. D. N. Pal in his Sankara the Sublime indeed says,
Tt is delusion that produces delusion. It is disease that pro¬
duces disease,’ 1 but Sankara himself would, we think, be ready
to point out the fallacy underlying this statement, and would
allow that in disease there is a positive maleficent agency at
work. In general also he would admit that you cannot hang
a chain of illusion in the air, that you must get back to reality
somewhere, and that only the real can produce anything, even
a power of illusion. The logic of the system would seem to
demand an ultimate acceptance of reality. As Prof. Das Gupta
puts it, 'With Sankara the forms of the external world were no
doubt illusory, but they all had a permanent background in the
Brahman which was the only reality behind all mental and
physical phenomena.’ 2 Vedantists are fond of the illustration
of the rope and the snake, but after all it is an actual rope which
produces the illusion of the snake. Sankara himself says, ' When¬
ever we deny something unreal, we do so with reference to
something real; the unreal snake, e.g., is negatived with refer¬
ence to the real rope .’3 It may be said indeed that a rigorous
illusionist has no right to the word 'illusion’: he ought to confine
himself to the word ‘hallucination’, for all 'illusion’ involves an
ultimate reference to reality such as we have just indicated, and
what is true of a particular illusion is true also of the cosmic
illusion. An Indian writer, St. Arulnandi, puts it thus, 'If you
say that all knowledge is Illusion, what you call Brahman is
Illusion; and, if Brahman is illusion, the assumption of intelli¬
gence falls to the ground.’ 4 Such reasoning would seem to be
incontrovertible: somewhere we must rest in the serie? of nega¬
tions. The question comes to be, how far back are we to go in
our search for reliable reality? Are we never to call a halt until

1 Op. cit. 198. * Das Gupta, I. 168.

3 Com. on Sutra 111. 2. 22, S. B. E. XXXVIII. 168.

4 Quoted in Carpenter, Theism in Medieval India, 361.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 143

we have reached a Brahman without qualities and, in our back¬
ward look, are we to negate entirely the world from which we
have started—sweep it out of existence with the magic word
'illusion’ ?

Here we come to the centre of our problem. What was it that
Sankara did? Was he a thoroughgoing illusionist? Did he
escape from every problem through what Carpenter calls 'the
backdoor of illusion’? What is the final interpretation of this
concept ?

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? 1

We have seen that some of Sankara’s fellow countrymen have
taken the conception at its face value, and that he himself fre¬
quently uses language which would suggest that he was inclined
to flee from the contradictions of the world and take refuge in
the conception of universal negation. But such a view would
not, we consider, represent the fullness of his thought, and
there is much to be said for those who attempt to present the
matter in another light, even though at times their conclusions
may seem to go beyond the evidence.

The first line of defence is that the whole conception of maya
is simply a symbol of humble and reverent agnosticism. As
Swami Vivekananda puts it, Sankara was content through this
conception to give us 'simply a statement of the fact of this
universe, of how it is going on’. 2 It is argued that, like a Scottish
philosopher of later days, Sankara felt that 'his line was too
short for such vast abysses’. When confronted with the prob¬
lem of the multiplicity of things, he, like Lotze, could not see
'how a plurality ever arose out of a single principle unless
various conditions . . . constrained it to produce here a and
there b or c \ 3 The conception of maya was the sign and sum¬
mary of Sankara’s perplexities. The multitudinous things of
the world were all a problem and a perplexity. They were and
yet they ought not to be; for they were inexplicable. As Prof.
Radhakrishnan puts it in attempting to express the attitude of
Sankara, 'As for the empirical ramifications which also exist,
well, they are there, and there is an end of it. We do not know

1 E. A. Poe,‘The Sleeper.’ * Jnana- Yoga, 10.

3 Philosophy of Religion, iB.

144 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

how and cannot know why. It is all a contradiction and yet is
actual. 51

Maya was the conception chosen to indicate the inexplicable.
But, as we have seen, when that which is inexplicable or inde¬
finable is set over against an abstract unitary being, a deprecia¬
tory attitude is apt to emerge in reference to the inexplicable.
The indefinable is of lesser worth than the definable; it is some¬
thing which cannot obviously be connected with the one great
Being; which, in other words, ought not to be, and is therefore
ultimately dismissible. So maya was made to bear the burden
of the mystery, and the conception was itself invested with
contradictions, of which perhaps the most important was that
it could be said, not at all without meaning, both to be and not
to be. And further degradation still was inevitable. From the
idea of depreciation to the idea of deception is but a short dis¬
tance, for when impatience of the inexplicable manifests itself,
the inexplicable is soon transformed into the delusive. We
cannot hold that whatever is a mystery to us is inexplicable also
to God. But for God to cause what is plain to himself to
become misleading as far as we are concerned, is to put into
operation a principle of concealment and deception. In this way
Sankara’s perplexity led him to the very edge of the morass of
illusionism, although originally and in deepest intention he was
a humble agnostic, worthy to have ascribed to him in the words
of Prof. Radhakrishnan, ‘a touching humility bom of intellec¬
tual strength,’ 2 of which humility and which strength maya is
the appropriate expression. This agnostic implication of maya
is emphasized by many writers.. Dr. Rabindranath Tagore says,
* The word maya is a mere name, it is no explanation, 5 ^ Prof.
Das Gupta describes it as ( a category which baffles the ordinary
logical divisions of existence and non-existence and the principle
of excluded middle 5 /\and Max Muller points out that the
‘primeval Avidya is left unexplained, it is not to be accounted
for, as little as Brahman can be accounted for’.S Further, on the
lines of a frequent criticism of the Kantian philosophy, it has
been pointed out that we are not justified in raising the question
of the cause of Nescience, because causality applies only to that

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 35.
4 Das Gupta, I. 442.

3 Op. cit. 34.

3 Sadhana , 95.
5 Muller, S.S. 171.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AV 1 DYA 145

empirical world which in its totality is the result of Nescience,
and cannot therefore explain the relation between Nescience
and the Absolute or between Nescience and the totality of the
world produced by it. As Mr. M. L. Bhattacharya puts it, ‘We
are not justified in raising the question, What is the cause of
Nescience? as all our ideas of causality fall within the circle of
Nescience, and so to find the cause of it would be like mounting
upon one's own shoulders.' 1 .

Now it is possible that Sankara was to a large extent the
reverent agnostic corresponding to the point of view indicated
in these passages. It is possible also that a definite advance
from agnosticism to dogmatism was left to later thinkers and
that Prof. Das Gupta is right when he says that Sankara only
made explicit the doctrine of maya in itself and that it was his
followers who were responsible for further metaphysical charac¬
terization. 2 But we cannot help feeling that very frequently
Sankara himself appears as the negative dogmatist who was not
content to say simply that we must leave unsolved the problem
of the existence of the many, but went the length of asserting
that all plurality must be illusory.

The other line of defence is taken by those who adopt the
interpretation of the Vedanta philosophy favoured by Ramanuja,
and minimize almost to vanishing point the difference between
him and Sankara. Ramanuja's position is that Scripture does
not teach us that Brahman is devoid of qualities, and that when
it is said that he is ‘without a second', all that is meant is to deny
the existence of any other principle separate from Brahman.
If, on occasion, it is said that he is without qualities, the inten-
tion is only to negate undesirable qualities and nothing more.
The plurality which is denied is that which would contradict
the conception of the world as being in its entirety an effect of
Brahman.3 Ramanuja thus sums up his conclusions: ‘The
authoritative books do not teach the doctrine of one undiffer¬
enced substance; they do not teach that the universe of things
is false; and they do not deny the distinction of intelligent
beings, non-intelligent beings and the Lord3

' 1 Pe /^ ta Phi l 0S °P h y> 55 - * Cf. Das Gupta, I. 470.

3 £ f - s Commentary on Sutra I. 1. 1, S. B. E, XLVIll. 8<.

4 lb. XLVIll. 102. 2

L

146 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

Now our differing amount of emphasis upon the particu¬
larity of the world may lead us to occupy our minds either with
the idea that everything is connected with Brahman, or that
there is nothing of value requiring connexion with him. We
may mean either that through Brahman all is known, or that
there is nothing to be known except Brahman. Those who hold
that the positions of Sankara and Ramanuja are very nearly
identical in regard to this matter would choose the first inter¬
pretation. If we accept the principle that ‘nothing exists uncon¬
nected with Brahman 5 , we may of course emphasize the first
two words, but if we do so, we, in their opinion, misrepresent
Sankara in regarding him as an illusionist who denied the
reality of the world. His real intention is to lay stress on the
connectedness with Brahman of the things of the world and not
to assert their unreality. Sankara’s teaching is tha t we are
wr ung if w e take the plurality in sepa ration TrornTBrahma n.
Xhe thingsoFTKe worldT^urelndeed^unreal in thejiLaeparate
partiafi^ with Brahman jthey

partake o f his regdity r^Tfare emphasis^wK^ upon

the unity and unchangeableness of Brahman is intended to
indicate that the world cannot be resolved altogether into par¬
ticulars but is throughout dominated by the controlling con¬
tinuity of the Divine Principle. The ultimate Unity is certainly
not to be identified with the variety of the world, but on the
other hand it is not exclusive of that variety. In order to reach ,
an apprehension of the Divine Unity we may indeed have to
fSggtFffie^verslfy^ buFthis nep6urTIsmiiy provisioiial^iid_

tEetrc^^ we negate^dSthings, but

wKerTwuViSwTiin^ , it is

lieI37 IsTin^ in the Vedanta. As Kirtikar

^puts it, ‘The finite world is not lost in the Vedantic Brahman,
/but retains its individuality. Even the individual who has
'reached perfection is not lost. 51 From this point of view the
Vedanta has been described as a ‘philosophy of relative reality 5 .
What is actual has certainly no independent existence, yet it has
existence, and is unreal only if we mistakenly ascribe indepen¬
dence to it.

We believe that this may properly describe Sankara’s underly-

1 Kirtikar, 108.

DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA 147

ing thought and that it was the position at which he was ulti¬
mately aiming. But he can hardly be said to have reached it.
If he had done so, he would not have been satisfied with saying
that the 'entire complex of phenomenal existence is to be con¬
sidered as true’ only ‘as long as the knowledge of Brahman
being the Self of all has not arisen 5 . The truth which he does
not seem to have grasped, and which many of his followers also
have failed to grasp, was that you cannot teach the essential
connectedness of the world with Brahman , and at the same time
asserF^ or other tEswhole world must ceaseJto

be real. IITFlsTonneHedwith Brahman in its essential charac¬
ter ^JtniugFhay^at least somethm^^ of Brah¬

man. As Thibaut rightt^pomts outTtheli’phoIder of the may a
doctrine cannot claim that his doctrine means merely that ‘we
are to look upon the whole world as a true manifestation of
Brahman, as springing from it, as animated by it. . . . 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 Brahm an,
viz. as a false app earance spread over it and hiding it from us. 51

Our conclusion then in regardTio the realistic aspect of may a
which has been emphasized by some defenders of Sankara's
position, and which has been outlined in the last two or three
paragraphs, is that it represents an ideal at which he was aiming
rather than a conclusion which he actually reached. He was
prevented from any satisfactory realistic rehabilitation of the
world by the mystical trend of his mind, which caused him to
be more interested in unity than in diversity. While he did not
neglect the latter, and indeed devoted a great part of his teaching
to cosmological theory, yet he did not treat the matter seriously
enough. Instead of patiently studying the world of ordinary
experience and arriving gradually at a unifying interpretation of
it, he allowed himself to be too easily disconcerted by its insta¬
bility and its confusion, and, impelled by religious devotion
expressing itself intellectually in intuition, sought for a way of
escape from it rather than for a solution of its problems. Thus
he was ready to accept the negative and unsatisfactory concep¬
tion of maya, which, as many even of its defenders allow, is not

1 S. B. E. XXXIV, p. cxx. Cf. also the present writer’s Pantheism and
the Value of Life , 227 ff.

148 doctrine of may a and avidyA

much more than a confession of the insolubility of the problem.
He was also hampered by the abstractness of his thought and
by his preoccupation with the idea that the Ultimate must be
without qualities. This dominating idea not only made his
search a hopeless one, but prevented him from finding in the
unity for which he was searching any key to the baffling prob¬
lems of the world. In his conception there stood on the one
hand the bare abstract Unity, and on the other the confused
world of experience. He could not bridge the gulf—except by
the conception of maya> in itself a recognition of the inexplica¬
bility of the world and a depreciation of its value.

Still it would be a mistake to regard the conception as wholly
a confession of philosophic defeat. It was more than this. It
was also a symbolic expression of that mystic consciousness
which lies in the depths of religious devotion, and which is
content to see the world pass away and the glory thereof, if only
it may abide in the Eternal. It is an implicit testimony to the
belief that the world is spiritual in its origin and essence.

It shows something of the spirit which, in Merejkowski’s
novel, The, Death of the Gods, the philosopher Iamblichus seeks
to instil into the youthful Julian, ‘Your soul will smile at your
body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall become silence,
you shall no more find utterance. And if at that moment the
world should crumble away, you would be happy; for what
would the world signify to you, since you shall be with him.’ 1
The tendency to negation was stronger in Sankara than the
tendency to affirmation, and what was wanting in his philosophy
was a fuller conception of God which would have led him to see
that to overcome the world both theoretically and practically
was better than to flee from it. In the words of Happel, "Not to
the destruction of sense or to the loosing of bonds between
Spirit and sense is man called, but to the domination and con¬
trol of the latter. He is called to an ever fuller illumination
and understanding of sense through the help of the spirit,
so that finally the sensible world may no more detach itself
from the Spirit, may no longer show itself as may a, but, itself
filled with the spirit, may become an eternal instrument of
the spirit.’ 3

x Death of the Gods , 86.

2 Happel, 225.

THE GOD OF QUALITIES 149

The analysis of the implications of maya leads us naturally to
a consideration of the distinction which Sankara makes between
the Brahman of qualities and the Brahman without qualities.
In conjunction with this we must also take account of the
opposite view of Ramanuja, who holds that the distinction is
unjustifiable, and a similar view of some of Sankara’s own
followers who hold that even in their master’s teaching the
distinction, though it may have been made, was not ultimate.

The depreciation of the world of ordinary experience which
we have seen to be implicit in the conception of maya seems
certainly to be reproduced in the distinction, emphasized in
Sankara, between the higher or attributeless Brahman {param,
nirgunam) and the lower or qualitative Brahman {aparam, sagu-
nam). Of the former we can predicate nothing except reality.
It is altogether beyond knowledge in the ordinary sense of the
term, although it is not unknown to the highest intuition. As
the Taittirlya Upanishad says, ‘The words and thoughts turn
back from it and find it not.’ 1 In the oscillation of the human
mind between the conceptions of sat and asat, Being and non-
Being, it always occupies the side of the relationship farthest
away from maya ; in other words, when maya is called sat,
Brahman is asat, and when maya is asat, Brahman is sat. Brah¬
man is, in Deussen’s phrase, ‘the last unknowable origin of the
existent’.* It is not a Being which possesses intelligence as an
attribute merely, it is itself pure intelligence or self-luminous-
ness. It is thought without any objects, and it can itself never
become an object of consciousness. It is essentially independent
of all relationships, even though it may enter into them. It is
untramelled and infinite, essentially blissful and peaceful in the
sense of being free from all influence of variety or change.

On the other hand, the sagunam, or lower Brahman, is the
abode of all good qualities, and from these qualities come forth
the world and the individual spirits. He is Isvara, the personal
God, and he gives rise to all beings according to the ordinary
cosmological processes of immanental theology. Matter and
souls are his modes. They exist in God in a subtle state, un¬
evolved so long as the pralaya stage persists; but when this
comes to an end, God, through an act of will, assumes creational
1 II. 4. a Deussen, F. 131.

ISO DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA
form and expands himself into all the diversity of the empirical
world, which diversity again will be resolved into the original
being at the end of every age, or kalpa.

The question we have to consider is the relation between
these two Brahmans. Sankara insists on a distinction between
them, and holds that this distinction is based upon the authority
of both the Sutras and the Upanishads. Ramanuja, on the other
hand, pushes the conception of the qualitative Brahman back
until it becomes identified with the ultimate Brahman. He has
no use for a non-qualitative Brahman such as Sankara posits,
and declares that the distinction is not supported either by the
Sutras or the Upanishads. In the passage from which we have
already quoted 1 he states explicitly that the Scriptures ‘do not
teach the doctrine of one undifferenced substance’.

Now we have seen that the Sutras seem to support Rama¬
nuja’s position rather than Sankara’s, but that there is good
reason to think that, though some of Sankara’s arguments, as,
e.g., those relating to the order of the passages, may be untrust¬
worthy, yet the tendency of the Upanishads is, on the whole,
in the direction of an ultimate of abstract or non-qualitative
character. At the stage we have reached, however, we are inter¬
ested not so much in the authority which is behind Sankara, as
in the philosophical validity of the distinction itself upon which
he lays so much stress. In this connexion it is at least note¬
worthy that by far the larger portions of Sankara’s own treatises
are concerned with the relations of the sagunam Brahman to the
world and to the individual soul. If his belief in the non-
qualitative Brahman had been as whole-hearted as he would
have us think, why should he have devoted so much attention
to the lower Brahman? Of course, in reply to this it may be
said that it is quite appropriate that little space in a philo¬
sophical treatise should be devoted to the exposition of a Being
who is chiefly revealed in silence, but again the rejoinder is
possible that at least the usefulness of what is of the utmost
importance should have been adequately set forth, and that,
proportionately, what is of lesser importance should not have
had so much attention drawn to it.

It is also interesting in this connexion to notice that some of
" 1 P* *53 * .■

THE GOD OF QUALITIES 151

Sankara’s followers have practically adopted the standpoint of
Ramanuja, and have attempted to ascribe it to Sankara himself.
They agree that no abrupt contrast should be drawn between
the nirgunam and the sagunam Brahman, and they argue that if
Sankara himself seems to make hard-and-fast distinctions, this
was only with a view to refuting those who showed an inclina¬
tion to lose Brahman in his works, and who failed to appreciate
that vast reserve in the nature of Brahman which did not come
to expression, and the divine continuity which persisted amidst
all the changes of the phenomenal world. If Sankara was
apparently depreciatory of the lower Brahman, it was only
through fear that, unless emphasis was laid upon the nature of
Brahman as he was in himself, the Creator of the world would
become merely a diffused divinity, altogether merged in his
works. According to Pundit K. Shastri, e.g., it is a mistake to
regard Isvara as distinct from Brahman, and Sankara himself
did not make this distinction. What he called illusory was not
so much the creative act, but the taking of this act and its pro¬
ducts in separation from Brahman. Isvara is the revelation of
Brahman, not complete indeed, because Brahman is inexhaus¬
tible, but still a real expression of the ultimate nature of the
ultimate God. We should not think first of Brahman and then
of a creator, as if they were two separate powers, on differing
levels of importance. They are continuous with each other, and
we pass from one to the other by an exceedingly natural
transition. 1

It is a little difficult to accept this view of Sankara’s teaching.
We are afraid that he can hardly be absolved from the charge of
attempting, as Lotze would put it, to write a history of the
world before creation, and to think of God apart from the
creation of the world. He is fascinated by the idea of unity and
simplicity, and cannot but conceive of any breach in this unity
as being to a certain extent a degradation. Because our intellect
has not so thoroughly penetrated into the details with which it
is dealing as to be able to present them in proper harmony with
each other, because, in other words, the diversity is still discon¬
certing, he prefers to turn his thoughts altogether away from the
diversity and fasten them on the unity. The apprehension of
1 Cf. K. Shastri, 19.

152 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYl

this unity gives him a sense of mystic satisfaction, and when he
turns back again to the diversity, it appears as something lower,
something almost unworthy. He expresses this feeling in the
conception of Isvara as -the first product of Nescience, the
primal embodiment of the magic power which is somehow or
other attached to the Absolute. In thinking of Isvara we may
but very slightly loosen our grasp upon the Absolute, our con¬
ceptions may undergo only the very smallest amount of depre¬
ciation, but still there is unmistakably a change. We have
taken a step downwards, and we should not attempt to deny it.
The idea of the phenomenal, of the unreal, has been introduced
into the being of the God of whom we may conceive or whom
we may_worship. As Prof. Das Gupta puts it, ‘In the Vedanta
system Isvara . . . is but a phenomenal being; he may be better,
purer, and much more powerful than we are, but still he is as
much phenomenal as any of us.’ 1

We may press further the question why, if Pundit K. Shastri
is right as regards the valuational equivalence of Brahman and
Isvara, Sankara should so often argue that differences must be
negated in order that unity may be preserved. He says, e.g.,
that ‘one and the same thing cannot in itself be affected by
differences and not affected’, and he considers that the only way
out of the difficulty is to say that the differences are illusory.
Again he tells us that we may ‘now and again for the purposes
of worship’ treat Brahman as qualified by distinctions, but we
must clearly recognize that this is a provisional permission
merely and is, strictly speaking, inconsistent with an appre¬
hension of the highest reality. 3 Finally, we may recall the
character of the mood which is fundamental in Sankara’s
thought, and which moves him to declare, that he can find
satisfaction only in unity and that ‘the passages of Scripture
about the negation of all differences have a meaning which
leaves nothing more to be wished for ’.3 He comes very near
indeed on many occasions to the conception attributed by a
recent writer to the believers in the old Greek mysteries; ‘that
the world is not God, or at any rate seems to be not God but
a thing apart from God, all shivered by its fall from the Divine
into a thousand individual fragments, in fine, that the world
1 Das Gu P ta * I- 477 . 2 Cf. 5 . B. E. XXXVIII. 402. 3 lb. 402.

THE GOD OF QUALITIES 153

exists at all—that is the primal evil, the original sin, the source
of all the sufferings of the world.’ 1

So we come back to the question, whether this conception of
the passage from unity to diversity as involving degradation,
this determination to place a God of qualities on a lower level
than the unqualified Absolute, is a necessary conception. We
do not think that it is. We think that Sankara’s attempt to press
this distinction proceeds from a distrust of human faculties
which is indeed reverent, but is not fully justified. It is closely
connected with his other distinction between two orders of
knowledge which we found had been pressed too far. The
human intellect cannot indeed reach the ultimate, but, in so
far as it works sincerely and humbly, its procedure is trust¬
worthy. We must not transform the inexhaustible into the
inaccessible; and Sankara himself seems to admit that the intel¬
lect can in some sense reach the Absolute, seeing that he was
able to place the two conceptions side by side and compare
them. And he should have pointed out more clearly that the
intellect is sublimated and not destroyed in intuition. It does
not come to a point at which it has to cast away all that it has
gained and proceed nakedly on another path. The results of its
previous procedure require transformation but do not incur
forfeiture in the presence of the Absolute. Sankara’s difficulties
arise from the assumption that the ultimate must be simple and
that our ideal relationship with it is one of unity rather than of
communion. He seemed to think that his deep desire for
religious satisfaction could be satisfied only by the apprehension
of an undifferenced ground of Being into which he could sink
utterly. He felt that, wherever qualities remained, these must
so affect our attitude that God will become an object and so
will remain for ever distinct from the worshipper. He was
dominated by the idea that in order to know God we must be
God. But surely this is not a necessary consequence. It is
indeed true that only God can know himself completely, but
this does not mean that God must absorb us into himself.
Neither does it imply that, on our part, there is,no distinction
between us and God, and that only a bare relation of identity
can express the highest religious attainment.

1 Art. on ‘Orphic Mysteries’, Hibbert Journal) Oct. 1922.

154 DOCTRINE OF MAYA AND AVIDYA

We may not have succeeded in bringing all the diversity of
our experience as well as ourselves into perfect harmony with
God, but it does not follow from this that the harmony can be
reached only through a denial of the diversity. The highest
unification would surely come through the fullest appreciation
of the illimitable qualities of the ultimate Reality, and not from
a denial that it has any qualities at all. It would be more satis¬
factory to regard the quest for identity which Sankara pursued
so earnestly and reverently, as a regulative ideal, expressive of
the humbling consciousness that our unification with the Divine
can never at any stage be regarded as complete. However
elaborate our conceptions of the nature of God may be, there is
always a ‘beyond’ to be reached; and however firmly we may
establish relations between the Divine Unity and the cosmic
multiplicity, there are always further and more fundamental
connexions waiting to be discovered and systematized. But we
are not therefore called upon to give up the quest and the
endeavour. We are not required to say that the highest descri-
bable conception of this unity which we may have reached, is
merely a fiction of our imagination or the misleading projection
of a cosmic magician, separated from Reality by a gulf which is
unbridgeable or can be crossed only by means of the cloud-
enveloped constructions of mayd, There is no necessity funda¬
mentally for this separation between Brahman and Is vara, or
for regarding the latter as simply the first product of deception.
Isvara is surely more than merely ‘the presiding spirit of mayd ,
the connecting link between the gross creation and the principle
that stands above it’. 1

It is because we are looking for the wrong kind of ultimate
Reality, for some abstraction that would ‘maintain its identity
unaffected’, 3 that we falter in our quest and reach only ultimate
fiction instead of ultimate fact. Perhaps we lose our faith in the
procedure of the intellect just because, as has been suggested
above, we are too purely intellectual. A more active attitude to
life would prevent us from being content with abstractions. If
we could recover that sense of‘something mysteriously spiritual,
not definite, but vaguely animating the world's it might be for
us ‘a presage of what our speculations call the ideal infinite
1 B. K. Shastri, 8i. ■* lb. 17. .3 Italics mine.

THE GOD OF QUALITIES 155

deity. 1 If we could throw ourselves with all the fullness of our
being into the life of the world in its onward and upward
surging, we might perhaps gain such a sense of the value of its
individual constituents that we should not be willing lightly to
deny them, but should desire to see them sublimated, restored,
redeemed in God, and would find God to be himself the ulti¬
mate Reality of the Universe, not requiring to be connected,
through the illusiveness of may a, with some further abstract and
characterless Being. As Prof. Radhakrishnan puts it, ‘The Self
in which we are to find ourselves must be shown to be the true
life of the whole and not a mere abstraction/ 2 The Gita states
for us a more concrete and satisfying conception than is generally
to be found in the Vedanta, ‘He is knowledge, its object and its
end, seated in the hearts of all... when he (the worshipper) sees
that the separate natures of things are seated in one, and issue
from it alone, then he attains to Brahma/3 And one of the
leaders of modern thought in India definitely departs from an
abstract and purely intellectual interpretation of the ancient
Indian ideal: ‘To attain the world-consciousness we have to
unite our feeling with this all pervasive infinite feeling. In fact
the only true human progress is coincident with this widening
of the range of feeling. All our poetry, philosophy, science, art,
and religion are serving to extend the scope of our conscious¬
ness towards higher and larger spheres/ 4

1 Alexander, Time, Space, and Deity, II. 367. Of. also Pringle-Pattison,
Idea of God, 113.

* Radhakrishnan, I. 157. 3 Gita, XIII. 17, 30.

4 Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana, 18.

VII

THE DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL. THE
PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

F ROM the grudging admission of the reality of the world of
. ordinary experience, which is the utmost that we can extract
from Sankara’s teaching, we may turn to a consideration of the
destiny of the individual souls within that world. In our last
chapter we saw that Sankara is dominated by the idea of unity,
and that a breach in the unity is almost equivalent to a degrada¬
tion. In even thinking of a God of qualities—of Isvara—we
have, in Sankara’s opinion, taken a step downwards.

Now if this is true in regard to Isvara, it will be all the more
true in regard to the infinite diversity of individual souls. The
very recognition of them will be a logical inconsistency, a sacri¬
fice of the esoteric to the exoteric. It is evidently with this
thought in his mind that Deussen takes the view that all
Sankara’s treatment of the individual souls and their relations
to God, all his discussions of immortality, all his somewhat
hesitating allusions to the doctrine of karma, are of the nature of
a compromise between his abstract idealism and an uncom¬
fortably insistent realism. From a strictly monistic point of
view a consideration of the individual soul and its ethical
progress is but a sojourning in a lower and impermanent world,
and any attempt at a proof of immortality is superfluous, because
we are already immortal-—in the only sense of the term which
Sankara would approve—in virtue of the essential identity be¬
tween us and God. Moreover, even from the exoteric point of
view, immortality is a vain expectation, because all things that
exist in the region of the empirical are subject to the conditions
of time. The soul which has its birth must inevitably cease to
be, and forms only an unimportant item in the unending process
of physical particulars. So neither from the esoteric side nor
from the exoteric taken by themselves can we win assurance, and
it is only from a somewhat doubtful combination of idealism and
realism that we can derive any doctrine of individual existence
and development either in this world or that which is to come.

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 157

But Deussen’s view of the matter does not seem to be alto¬
gether satisfactory. In the first place, on general philosophical
grounds, there does not seem to be sufficient reason for estab¬
lishing such an abrupt dualism between idealism and realism as
Deussen thinks to be inevitable. Idealism does not necessarily
involve an absolute denial of the empirical and actual. Secondly,
just as it is impossible for a man to jump off his own shadow, it
is equally impossible for him wholly to deny the particularity
of the world in which he finds himself, and we have already
found reason to think that Sankara, while ostensibly a rigorous
monist, is at times vividly aware of the necessity of reaching
some accommodation to the world of experience. He builds
more wisely than he knows and provides windows through
which he may look out upon actuality, even while formally
denying their existence or necessity.

About his formal denial of the existence of individual souls
there can be no doubt, and we may first set forth his rigidly
esoteric position and contrast it with Ramanuja’s. Vedanta
Sutra I. 1. 19 speaks of the ‘joining of this (i.e. the individual
soul) with that (the Self consisting of bliss) on that being fully
known (i.e. in the anandamaya state)’, and Sankara interprets
their ‘joining’ as meaning identity and nothing else. His com¬
ment is as follows : ‘If he sees in the Self consisting of bliss even
a small difference in the form of non-identification, then he
finds no release from the fear of transmigratory existence. But
when he by the cognition of absolute identity, finds absolute
rest in the Self consisting of bliss, then he is freed from the fear
of transmigratory existence.’ 1 The doctrine of identity is stated
even more explicitly and more emphatically in the Com¬
mentary on Sutra 1.4. 22. Sankara selects from the Upanishads
that figure which best suits his dominant view and compares
the origination of souls from the highest Self to the issuing of
sparks from a fire. He declares that the differences between the
soul and the highest Self are not real but are due to ‘limiting
adjuncts’ only. We have to do entirely with ‘names and forms’
and the individual soulyas an embodiment of these, is the pro¬
duct merely of Nescience. In a still more vigorous passage he
says, ‘As therefore the individual soul and the highest Self differ
« S. B. E. XXXIV. 71-

158 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

in name only, it being a settled matter that perfect knowledge
has for its object the absolute oneness of the two; it is senseless to
insist (as some do) on a plurality of Selfs and to maintain that
the individual soul is different from the highest Self, and the
highest Self from the individual soul. 51 And looking to the
future and the question of immortality generally, Sankara takes
up the position that the immortality of the individual soul is
relative only. It can be expected only by him who is dependent
on The power of the lower knowledge’, and has not ‘altogether
burned nescience and the other afflictions’.*

Ramanuja, on the other hand, following more or less closely
the primary interpretation of the Sutras , but remaining at a
greater distance from the general tendency of the Upanishads,
holds that the individual soul is real; it enjoys a certain amount
of freedom even under the conditions of this life, and passes at
death through various stages to the world of Brahman where it
will exist, not in a state of indistinguishable identity with the
Divine, but in a perfected relation of communion. True know¬
ledge will bring about only the destruction of the separatist
spirit in word or in deed. Personality will assuredly continue.
The ultimate significance of Sutra I. i. 19 is that ‘the highest
Brahman . . . is other than the Being called individual soul’,
and the contrary opinion is subjected to the vigorous comment,
‘To say that any one is identical with that by obtaining which
he enjoys bliss,'would be madness indeed.’3 In regard to the
future and especially the point raised in Sutra IV. 2.7, Ramanuja
holds that the immortality there indicated is common both to
him who knows and to him who does not know, i.e. the im¬
mortality is not merely relative, and perfect knowledge does not
destroy individual immortality.

Sankara increases the impression of a depreciation of indi¬
viduality by certain particular interpretations which he gives of
various Sutras. In regard to Sutra II. 3. 50 4 Sankara has no
doubt of the applicability of the symbol of the sun and its
reflections. The individual soul has no more reality than that of
a flickering reflection on a restless piece of water. It may be

1 S. B. E. XXXIV. 282.

■* Cf. Sutra IV. 2. 7 ;S. B. E. XXXVIII. 370.

3 S. B. E. XLVIII. 237. 4 49 in Ramanuja.

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 159

noticed, in passing, that Ramanuja takes an entirely different
view of this Sutra. What Sankara translates as, £ And the indi¬
vidual soul is a reflection only’ Ramanuja translates, ‘and it is
a mere apparent argument 5 , 1 i.e. the unreality which Sankara
ascribes to the individual soul Ramanuja attaches to the argu¬
ment by which the unreality of the individual soul is sought to
be established. In a slightly earlier Sutra of the same section, we
seem to have the unequivocal statement that ‘the soul is a part
of the Lord on account of the declarations of differences 5 .
Ramanuja takes this literally, but Sankara, after indicating that
the most appropriate symbol is that of the fire and its sparks,
says that we must interpret the particular Sutra to mean only
‘a part, as it were '. 2 The individual soul cannot really be a part
of that which has no parts, and to suppose that it has parts and
that therefore the individual souls are real, is the result of the
universal illusion. Ramanuja is vigorously of another opinion
and brushes aside Sankara’s interpretation with the contemp¬
tuous remark, ‘Truly, if such were the purport of the Veda,
what more would the Veda be than the idle talk of a person out
of his mind ? 53

A similar tendency is indicated when Sankara, treating
matters from the physical point of view, expresses the doctrine
of the identity of the soul and God under the symbol of the all-
pervadingness of the former. 4 Ramanuja, on the other hand,
recognizes that the most appropriate symbol for his doctrine is
that the soul should be regarded as of atomic size (anu). This
view is supported by the nine Sutras immediately preceding;
but Sankara brushes aside the argument of the Sutras by ex¬
plaining that the atomic view therein indicated refers only to the
soul when associated with the organ of intelligence ( buddhi ), and
therefore belonging only to a lower state.

From a psychical point of view, Sankara argues, in connexion
with Sutra II. 3.18, that the soul is pure intelligence, i.e. the
eternal intelligence of Brahman constitutes the soul’s essen¬
tial nature and leaves no room for difference. On the other
-hand Ram anuj a translates the same Sutra as ‘ The Individual

1 S. B. E. XXXVI. 60 and XLVIII. 565.

* Cf. S.B. E. XXXVIII. 61 and XLVIII. 561.

3 S. B. E. XLVIII. 562.

4 Cf. Comm, on-'SutraTip 3. 39; B. E. XXXVIII. 42.

160 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

soul is a knower\ i.e. an individual, active, consciously intelligent
subject, having distinction from Brahman, and the Sanskrit
term used, according to Thibaut, bears out his view. 1

There seems to be sufficient support, therefore, for the view
that on the whole Sankara’s admission of the individual soul is
of the nature of a concession. From the highest point of view it
is, according to him, identical with, or at least not-different
from, Brahman himself. It is only from the empirical point of
view that we are temporarily justified in speaking of a plurality
of souls. But Sankara’s own treatment of the matter from the
empirical point of view is so voluminous and elaborate (though
probably he was constrained to this from the amount of attention
devoted to the topic in the Sutras themselves) that we cannot
afford to regard it as merely concessional and of secondary im¬
portance. And we must also keep in mind in this connexion the
contention of many Indian writers that the English words
‘identical’ and £ non-different’ have not the same significance,
and that the latter alone is the proper interpretation of l ananya\
a consideration which may at least incline our minds to a more
liberal construction of Sankara’s rigorous monism.

The individual soul is constituted—or disguised as Sankara
would put it—by the upadhis, empirical conditions or limiting
adjuncts. Of these the first is the condition of the gross body,
which need not detain us, as this is entirely left behind in the
migrations of the soul, and all schools of the Vedanta are far
removed from materialism. In the conditions which attach to
the soul in the existence which persists through innumerable
lives, we may distinguish a changing and an unchanging part.
The changing part is of vital importance in connexion with the
doctrine of karma y and includes those moral consequences
which have been passed on from one to another in an infinite
series of lives and which to a large extent determine the em¬
pirical destiny of the soul.

The unchanging part is the nucleus of the soul and consists
(i) of that substratum which may be called the ‘subtle body’ and
which is made up of the extremely subtle counterparts of the
gross elements. It has a persistence which enables these subtle
elements to continue after the death of the gross body. (2) We
> Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV, p. xcvii.

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 161

have the more active aspect of the subtle body, the life-organs
or pranas , the vital breaths of the soul. On the conscious level
these include the five organs of sense and the five organs of
action, co-ordinated by and under the control of the Manas , or
central organ of conscious life. But behind these fully conscious
aspects of the soul there is posited, with a fine anticipation of
more modern doctrines of the unconscious and the sub-con¬
scious, the Prana (in a limited sense) or Mukhya Prdna* the
ultimate nucleus of life, both physical and mental in its relation¬
ships, subtly supporting the physical processes of respiration
and nutrition and rendering intelligible the act of death, but
having vague affiliations also with the mental activities of the
soul which are below the level of clear consciousness. Indeed
one of the most interesting aspects of the Vedanta philosophy is
just such an interplay between physical and psychic conceptions.
It seems to be left undecided whether the soul is more closely
associated with the Mukhya Prana or with the Manas , and in
this hesitation lies much wisdom.

An elaborate account is given of the relations of these various
organs of the soul in the three states of waking, dreaming, and
dreamless sleep, and also of their fate at death, but into the
details we need not enter to any extent. We may note only that
at death there takes place a process of involution. The soul
gathers the organs of sense and action, or at least the functions
of these organs, first of all into the Manas . 2 Then the Manas is
merged in the Prdna , or breath. The process may be paralleled
on the mental side by the retraction from sense-experience
which in the lifetime of the individual has taken place during
dream sleep and the further concentration which is associated
with passing into dreamless sleep. The next stage is more
vaguely described. The Prdna is said to merge in heat (tejas)
and is also said to merge in the essence of the individual soul . 3
But in both these ways we come near to the idea of the subtle
body (indefiniteness here being made to serve the purpose of
comprehensiveness). The subtle body is the fine part of the
elements, the seed of the body, and constitutes the vehicle by
which the continuity of the soul is preserved from one life to

1 Cf. Deussen, S. V, 326.

3 Cf. Sutra IV. 2. 4.

M

3 Cf. Sutra IV. 2. 1.

162 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL
another, unaffected by death. It is the elementary metaphysical
substratum of the departing soul. 1

With this is closely associated the moral substratum which by
reference to past behaviour determines the character of the
departing personality and its future destiny. The karma-dsraya
is the summing up of past experiences, of impressions and the
results of actions. When the soul is about to enter on its new
life, the past experience is focused as an innate concentrated
disposition which gives a starting-point, differentiating the new
life from previous lives. As this concentrated effect of the past
cannot properly be in actuality until the existence which is
passing away has come to a definite end, it may be regarded as
something new, something which was not there before. Some
writers therefore in this connexion posit an entity called the
apurva? half physical and half spiritual, which is described
as ‘either an imperceptible after-state of the deed, or an imper¬
ceptible antecedent state of the result\3 From one point of
view the doctrine of apurva might be regarded as an attempt
to get away from the externality of the notion that judge¬
ment is passed upon acts alone, and an anticipation of the
more modern view that it is passed rather upon character. Only,
in connexion with apurva the character is still left as a some¬
what detached entity and is not brought into organic and ethical
connexion with the continuing personality of the doer of the
action. Sankara himself, however, does not see any necessity
for any such mediating conception, and his hesitation is inter¬
esting for the light which it throws upon the character of the
tradition which he has inherited, as well as upon his view of the
doctrine of karma.

Before touching upon this latter doctrine we may take into
consideration the varying kinds of destiny to which the com¬
bination of the elemental and the moral substratum leads the
soul. Souls may be divided into three classes: according as they
have developed within them knowledge (which, according to

1 Cf. Deussen, S. V. 375. 3 Of. Sutra III. 2. 39.

3 Cf. S. B. E. XXXVIII. 182. Cf. also the Vaisesika doctrine of adrishta —
the unknown virtue due to dharma —described in Das Gupta, I. 283. Cf.
also the well-known Vedic idea of ishtdpiirta, a compound word denoting
sacrifices and offerings. In the Rigveda X. 14. 8 it is regarded as something
which can be stored up and which will have effect in after-life. Cf. McKenzie,
Hindu Ethics, 14.

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 163

Sankara, is ‘lower’, but according to Ramanuja is the highest
attainable); according as they have depended only on ritual and
moral works; and, finally, according as they have neglected both
knowledge and works. The first go by way of the Gods (the
Devaydna) to eternal and ultimately blissful communion with
the qualitative Brahman. The second go by the way of the
Fathers (the Pitnydna ) to the moon, there to receive the reward
of their deeds and of all the previous attainments of their souls,
the retribution continuing, in varying degrees of felicity or
otherwise, until only a residue is left, which residue will deter¬
mine their future lot upon the earth, and so on and on, until the
purification of their souls is so far advanced as to enable them
to exchange the path of the Fathers for the path of the Gods. 1
The third class, composed of those who have not sought to
acquire merit either by knowledge or by works, go to the ‘third
place’ by ‘a path on which they repeatedly return to the exist¬
ence of small animals’.* It must be noticed, however, that the
boundaries between the second and the third classes are left
comparatively vague, and the idea is frequently brought for¬
ward that the evil-doers may also receive their retribution in
some kind of intermediate state, their destination being, not the
moon, but the abode of Yama, whence, after ‘suffering there the
torments of Yama corresponding to their evil deeds, they again
reascend to this world’. 3

The important distinction, therefore, is between the first two
classes, between those who are worthy to enter the Path of the
Gods and those who are not so worthy. In connexion with this
distinction the interesting physiological and mythological detail
is supplied that of the hundred and one veins of the heart, the
one which leads up to the head is the path by which the depart¬
ing soul of the worthy man goes to the realm of Brahman,

1 What particular class of works make up this residue is doubtful. It
is held by some Vedantists that the stronger works receive their recom¬
pense first, i.e, in the intermediate state, whereas the weaker remain with
effect sufficient to cause a new birth. Others are satisfied with a purely quanti¬
tative idea of the remaining balance, while others again attempt to make the
distinction between ritual and moral works, and hold .that the former are
recompensed in the intermediate state and the latter receive their recom¬
pense or retribution in a new birth. Cf. Sutra III. 1.9; S. B, E. XXXV1U.
121.

T Cf. Sutra III. x. 17; S. B. £. XXXVIII. 134.

3 Cf. Sutra III. 1. 13; S-B. E. XXXVIII. 122.

M 2

x6 4 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL
whereas the less worthy and the unworthy have to go by any
of the other numerous modes of exit.

From these descriptions we may select two topics as demand¬
ing further consideration: (i) the doctrine of karma as affecting-
the individual soul, and (2) the ultimate condition of those who
reach the realm of Brahman.

We have already referred to the interesting character of
Sutra III. 2. 38-41, and the light they throw on the doctrine
of karma. We discover, on the one hand, a tendency in the direc¬
tion of regarding the power of the deed in an objective manner,
and, on the other hand, towards resolving all power into the
hands of God himself. The first tendency implies that those
who hold it have, either consciously or unconsciously, served
themselves heir to a long tradition in which the conceptions of
ishtapurta, rita, dharma (all implying continuing effects of deed
or conduct, both ritual and moral), as well as the later concep¬
tion of apurva, have played a conspicuous part, and in the
development of which, down to the time of Sankara, Buddhist
influence has been strong. For those who think in this way,
the fundamental forces of the universe are still animistically
or polytheistically conceived, and we are not far from the con¬
ception of God as struggling against some power of fate outside
of himself. In relation to the karma conception, the deeds of
men have acquired that independent actuality which invests
them with an energy differentiated from that of the central
powers of the universe.

On the other hand, Sankara—and Ramanuja also—wish to
centralize all the available power. The actions of human beings
do not bring fruit of themselves, either directly or indirectly: it
is the Lord who causes this fruit to appear. But if all power
is thus vested in God, difficulties immediately arise as to the
nature of God and his relations to men. Will he not appear to
be oppressively dominating the activity of the individual ? The
general answer of the Vedanta to difficulties of this nature is to
suggest, not that the Divine control should be regarded as
diminished, but that its relation to human activity should be
conceived of as indirect and not direct. If God can be placed at
one or two removes from man, then he may be defended from
the charge of oppression and at least a semblance of freedom

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 165

may be left to human beings. Thus the action of God may be
generalized so that its incidence is not immediately upon the
individual action but upon the whole karmic process in which
the individual and his action is involved; fatalism can be softened
by being universalized, the tyranny of a tyrant being replaced by
the stern inexorability of a law-giver or judge. Or recourse may
be had to metaphors which mitigate the harshness of compul¬
sion and represent God as a cause of a more occasional character.
God’s control may be likened to the rain in relation to the
various shrubs. As the rain provides opportunity for their
favourable but diversified growth, so does God arrange ‘favour¬
able or unfavourable circumstances for the soul with a view to
their former efforts’. We should compare also the commentary
on Sutra II. 1. 34, ‘For as Parjanya (the giver of rain) is the
common cause of the production of rice, barley, and other
plants, while the differences between the various species is due
to the various potentialities lying hidden in the respective seeds,
so the Lord is the common cause of the creation of gods, men,
&c., while the differences between these classes of beings are
due to different merit belonging to the individual souls.’ 1 Still,
even metaphors of this kind do not carry conviction, and the
almost desperate attempt to remove our difficulties as to the
freedom of the individual soul, leads in the same section to what
seems to be little more than a bare asseveration of a contradic¬
tion. It. is conceded that the soul acts by its own activity, and
almost in the same breath the concession is withdrawn. ‘Al¬
though the activity of the soul is not independent, yet the soul
does act. The Lord indeed causes it to act, but it acts itself.’
Reasoning of this sort is hardly sufficiently cogent to relieve us
of the fatalism of a passage like Kaushltaki Upanishad III. 8,
which Sankara quotes with approval. ‘He makes him whom he
wishes to lead up from these worlds, do a good deed, and the
same makes him whom he wishes to lead down from these
worlds, do a bad deed.’

But, putting aside the question of the apportionment of
responsibility between Divine and human power, it must
be remembered in this connexion that God cannot rightly be
charged with pitilessness and arbitrary cruelty. We must
* S.B.E. XXX IV. 358 and XXXVIII. 60.

166 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

remember not only the metaphysical but also the moral aspect of
the karmic process. Even though we were to go all the way with
the fatalists, even though we were to admit that God provides
the all-controlling conditions of each life and acts also in each
particular action of the individual soul, yet in the apportionment
of happiness or misery he must have regard to the particular
place occupied by the individual soul, and will vary the destiny
accordingly. Cf. again Sutra II. i. 34, ‘Hence the Lord, being
bound by regards, cannot be reproached with inequality of dis¬
pensation and cruelty.’ 1 He cannot begin de novo . He has to
observe the existing actualities and the law which emerges in
relation to them, even though this law be little better than lex
talionis , based on a principle of exact retribution. The tyrant
gives place to the judge or at least to the administrator of the
law. We were perhaps rash in saying above that the judge in
this case was also the lawgiver, for at first sight it might seem
as if God’s righteousness were vindicated by putting him under
the constraint of a law external to himself, for which he was
not responsible. But there are at least indications of the in¬
fluence of the idea—afterwards so strongly emphasized by
Lotze—that the law is not external to God but is simply an
expression of his own nature. He himself, as would appear to
be obvious when stress is laid specially upon the all-pervading
causality of God, is said to be primarily responsible for the
whole course of the samsara and the empirical destiny of souls.
And although he may also retain the power of graciously grant¬
ing deliverance from the samsara through the saving power of
knowledge, yet for the most part his responsibility is discharged
in a regular manner. Thus, however we may put the matter,
the idea of regularity is conspicuous, and God, being under a
law of righteousness, either external or his own, may be de¬
fended from any charge of arbitrariness.

But this vindication is immediately countered by another
difficulty. Sankara’s critics point out that he has simply pushed
the problem farther back. God’s action, it is said, may be
justified by the suggestion that he has to act with reference to
the deserts of former lives, but what about these former lives
themselves, what about the first in the series ? At the beginning
x Cf. S. B. E. XXXIV, 359-

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 167

of the transmigratory process, when there could be no accumu¬
lated merit, what justification could there be for unequal crea¬
tion? 1 Sankara meets this objection with the simple bold state¬
ment that the world has no beginning, because, if it had, then
God would have to be accused of arbitrariness. Can this carry
conviction? It seems to be a barefaced case of circular reason¬
ing. God cannot be accused of arbitrariness because of the
existence of the samsara, and the samsara must exist because
God cannot be accused of arbitrariness. But it is not wise to
bring a charge of fallacious reasoning against a philosopher of
Sankara’s quality, and we have the feeling that there is more in
his argument than appears on the surface. Is he not struggling
with the difficulty of relating the eternal God to the temporal
process ? May he not be making an attempt to place God above
time, or, at least, to get rid of the somewhat crude idea of God
as standing at the beginning of creation, looking forward, and
apportioning to each soul its destiny through all succeeding
aeons of time ? Has he not got implicitly in his mind the thought
that our temporal categories are inadequate for the representa¬
tion of God, and that he is to be conceived of rather as an over¬
shadowing and pervasive Presence than as one who stands be¬
hind us in time far away at the beginning of human destiny and
determining it fatalistically for ever more. And yet Sankara,
after looking at the difficulties, seems in the last resort to turn
away from them, for his final position is that whatever problems
may remain, belong after all to an unreal world, the world of
names and forms, and therefore may be disregarded. Why
should we worry over apparent injustices in the world or in the
Divine control of it when the world itself does not exist?

We come therefore in general to the conclusion that Sankara
does not deal adequately with the karma doctrine. In so far as
he accepts it, he does not relieve it of the charges that it treats
each life as subject too much to an individualistic destiny, that
it is inclined to hypostatize abstractions under the influence of
a persisting animism, that in its more universal aspect its ethical
level is legal rather than moral, that it rarely rises above the
idea of sheer retribution, and that, despite references to divine
grace, it does not escape the danger of impersonal and fatalistic
■ Cf. Sutra II. 1. 35; S. B. E. XXXIV. 359-

168 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

domination over the human life. In so far as he rejects it, he
leaves his rejection side by side with his acceptance. He leaves
unresolved the dualism which the doctrine suggests as to the
relation between God and the world. He does not by trans¬
forming the doctrine bring the world into organic relation
with the eternal nature of God, but turns away from the
difficulty as from an unreal problem of an unreal world.

We must now consider the second point that has been reserved,
viz. the ultimate condition of those who reach the realm of
Brahman. By overcoming the evil karma of their past and by
scrupulous care that they may not accumulate new karma , they
may reach this high position. But in doing so, have they reached
the ultimate goal, or must they still confess that they have
failed to discover the true path of salvation? Which is to be
followed—Ramanuja or Sankara—as regards the doctrine of
the ultimate destiny of the soul? In the main they agree as to
the preliminary stages. It is in connexion with the final stage
of all, and the retrospective valuation of the whole process of
the soul’s ascent, that the most important differences emerge.

Following their common lead we have found that the souls
who proceed upwards on the way of the Devayana , after passing
through various stages, at length enter into Brahman’s world to
abide with him in an eternity of bliss and perfect communion,
with participation in all the qualities of Brahman, according to
some, or, at least, as Audulomi thinks, with participation in the
intelligence of Brahman. In this state they enjoy the fulfilment
of all purified desires, and their lordship is unlimited, except in
so far as it is restricted by the cosmic, creative, and sustaining
powers reserved for Isvara, who, however, also possesses the
power to harmonize any incompatible wishes of the pious.
There is finality about this state in that it cannot possibly
change into anything lower. Tor them verily there is no return
to earth life.’ 1 But whether it is final in the sense that it cannot
change into anything higher is just the main question at issue
between Sankara and Ramanuja. We may put the problem in
both a narrower and a broader way. We may ask whether the
stage which is regarded as highest by Ramanuja is really final
1 Of. Sutra IV. 4. zz .

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 169
or n ot? Or we may raise the question of comprehensive
evaluation and ask whether there was really any necessity pain¬
fully and gradually to make our way to such a stage at all.

In treating the problem in the simpler way we must bear m
mind Sankara’s distinction between the lower and higher Brah¬
man, and we may show that his view is that the Brahman with
whom the soul enters into perfect communion at Ramanuja s
highest stage, is not the higher but the lower Brahman. This
lower Brahman will himself be merged in the higher, and there¬
fore the soul which has entered into communion with the
former, will also share in the state of perfect indivisibility with
the latter. It will not reach unity with God, but will rather dis¬
cover that unity which has never been lost, that oneness without
a second, and, as rivers run into the sea and lose their name and
form, so will it merge its identity in the undifferenced Absolute
The character which it has acquired in the painful and gradual
stage of its ethical and karmic ascent will be lost in a purely
metaphysical absorption.

By treating the question from the broader point of view we
may reach much the same conclusion. We must here keep in
view primarily Sankara’s distinction between the two orders of
knowledge, and also his depreciation of the salvational value of
works. By those who follow him in this attitude it is urged that
there is little to be gained by passing through the various stages
of the upward ascent; for, after all, the consummation which is
aimed at by this method will turn out to be the reward of the
lower knowledge only. Therefore we may shorten the whole
process, or, rather, make it superfluous, by reaching the illu¬
mination of the paravidya, the highest knowledge, the immedi¬
ate consciousness of identity with Brahman, which is possible
for us here and now. Such a result is to be obtained by direct
meditation, especially concentrated on the formula tat tvarh an,
which exercise of the soul may have to be repeated again and
again if the full significance does not dawn upon the first
hearing. Works may be of use as preparatory and purificatory

disciplines, but not as a means of securing the illumination. In

fact, the man who has won emancipation, and thus possesses the
higher knowledge, is independent not only of evil but also of
good works. There is ‘non-clinging and the destruction of

I 7 0 DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

earlier and later sins 5 , 1 and, 'Also of the other (i.e. good works)
there is in the same way non-clinging; but at death.’ 3 4 Sankara
takes the phrase ‘but at death’ to be merely emphatic and to
signify ‘especially at death’. Ramanuja takes a modified view
and explains the phrase as meaning, ‘Good works which produce
results favourable to knowledge and meditation, perish only on
the death of the body (not during the life-time of the Devotee ).’3
The sage, according to Sankara, is thus raised above all conditions
of mundane existence. Nothing that is outside of Brahman has
any power to disturb him, and he has not to wait for the slow
temporal processes of improvement in this life and the next.
But why, if Sankara’s view is correct, should he have to wait
even for the end of this present life? Sankara deals with this
difficulty by citing the physical analogy of the potter’s wheel,
which continues to revolve even after it has completed its work in
moulding a particular vessel. But behind this metaphor there is
also the theory—not by any means confined to Sankara’s teaching
—that work effects may be divided into three classes: accumu¬
lated ( samchita ); current, in the sense that they have begun to
affect the soul (prarabdha); and finally, those due to the activity of
the present life (kriyamana). Illumination affects only the first
class and the third. Works which belong to the second class, and
have already begun to affect the soul, must continue their opera¬
tion until at death their force is exhausted. Some Vedantists dis¬
tinguish two stages even within the condition of illumination,
the lower being the condition of the enlightened sage even pre¬
vious to death (jwanmukti)^ and the higher being the complete
stage which is reached in freedom from the body (videhamukti).*
But in order to accomplish this final merging in Brahman, we
do not require, according to Sankara, to imagine at death any
semi-angelic flight of the spirit by the Path of the Gods. Time
and space no longer exist for the illumined soul when he has
reached the point of death. Then,

ends the man

Upwards in that dread point of intercourse,

Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him

What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.

1 Cf. Sutra IV. i. 13.

3 S. B. E. XLVIII. 724.

3 Sutra IV. 1. 14.

4 Cf. Barnett, Brahma-Knowledge , 52.

DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL 171

Under such conditions how is it possible to speak of a 'depart¬
ing* or ‘going to Brahman’? ‘To what sphere , asks Sahkaia,
‘then belong the scriptural texts about the soul’s going? To
the sphere of qualified knowledge, we reply. . . . The reaching
of another place is out of the question. Statements about the
soul’s going which apply to the lower Brahman are wrongly
put in connexion with the higher Brahman. 1 Even if we at¬
tempt to deal with the matter by means of physical analogies,
and speak of omnipresence, there is the same want of suitability,
for that which is omnipresent cannot pass from one place to
another. And as regards timelessness, the soul need not wait
upon the slowness of passing through the various stages. It is
now, what it eternally has been. So with great earnestness
Sankara argues that the proper interpretation of Sutra IV. 2.13
is that the soul ‘does not depart’. This is the plain meaning of
Scripture according to him, and those are altogether wrong who
try to wrest this meaning and make out that ‘do not depart’ has
reference simply to the relation of the pranas to the soul and
implies that they abide with it in readiness for a conjunct
passing out at the moment of death. We are not called upon to
decide whether Sankara is right or not in regard to the inter¬
pretation of this particular text. There can be no doubt what¬
ever about his own view of the matter, which is, that illumina¬
tion may confer a non-temporal and non-spatial emancipation,
making the sage independent of cosmical processes and ethical
endeavour, and raising him above the slow movement of the
kramamukti (or gradual liberation). Like Iamblichus in Merej-
kowski’s Death of the Gods, he would ask, ‘Whence comes
that beam which falls upon the soul ? I do not know. It
comes unawares, and when one least expects it. To search
for it is useless. God is not remote from us. One must
make ready, with a soul becalmed; and simply wait, as the
eyes aw^it (according to the saying of the poet) the rush of
the sun from the dark ocean. God does not come, God does
not go away; He is revealed, He is, what the Universe is not,
the negation of everything that exists. He is nothing, and He
is All.’ 2

X Cf. Sutra IV. 3. 14; S. B, E. XXXVIIL 401.

2 Op. cit. } Eng. trans. Si.

i 7 1 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

The topics which have been treated of in the last few para¬
graphs throw considerable light upon the Vedantic view of the
relation of ethical endeavour to ultimate reality, and to this
question we must devote the remainder of this chapter. Does
Vedantic doctrine strengthen ethical endeavour, or is it rather
indifferent to it ? Is the final state which is aimed at by the sage
one in which the ethical process is conserved and sublimated ?
We have already touched upon this topic in connexion with our
discussion of the ‘place of works’ in the Vedantic system, but
we must now treat the question from a more general point
of view.

If Sankara is taken to be the typical Vedantist, the answer
will largely tend to be that the ethical process is cut across and
the ethical level is transcended. That which the pious man
reaches by his moral striving is not final, and his ethical gains
are not carried forward into the ultimate state, but rather put
aside as T at the most an inadequate approach to what can best be
attained by other methods. The Vedantists would for the most
part agree with Bosanquet’s idea that perfection is a higher con¬
cept than the concept of the good, which latter belongs definitely
to the stage of finite experience and not to reality as a whole. 1

With the Vedantist the attitude is closely allied to the implica¬
tions of a strict interpretation of the doctrine of maya, and to the
contention that the Ultimate Reality is without qualities. In
closer reference to ethics the essence of the Vedantic doctrine
seems to be that, however earnest the ethical aspirant may be,
and however widely he may extend his activities so that, in
crucifixion of all selfishness, they may be devoted to the interests
of others, it is impossible to get rid of egoity in the sphere of
ethical endeavour; and yet without deliverance from egoity the
final state cannot be attained. Full knowledge does not prevent
selfishness and other kinds of evil by directing our desires to¬
wards a wider righteousness, but rather by destroying desire
altogether. And, in general, ethics deals with ‘approach’, where¬
as the enlightened man is concerned with ‘recovery’. Ethics
belongs essentially to the sphere of duality, and is not in place
in any sphere in which activity is denied or transcended.

Sankara, as we have seen, was not so doubtful as St. Paul
1 Of. Roger, Recent American and English Philosophy, 278.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA m

about the possibility of fulfilling the works of the law, but he
held that, even if the law were fulfilled, it was powerless to effect
the emancipation of the soul. He thought that ethical endeavour
even of the highest kind was impossible except in conjunction
with the assertion of individuality and personality; and that,
because the ego cannot be got rid of in moral progress, and yet
the assertion of the ego renders impossible the attainment of
the highest state, the sphere of ethics must be left behind.
Morality must be transcended if the end of ethics, viz. perfec¬
tion, is to be attained. He hardly seems to entertain the idea of
a gradual transformation from the incomplete to the complete,
from the imperfect to the perfect. As Deussen puts At, ‘Moral
transformation remained foreign to Indian thought.^ A con¬
tradiction lies at the very heart of ethics. In order that ethics
may reach its goal, the annihilation of the self, ethics itself must
disappear.

The argument is that while we remain ourselves, it will be
impossible for us to resolve this contradiction. We cannot
comprehend how the sphere of the ego may be transcended.
But it would almost seem as if the Vedanta, because we cannot
understand, gave us permission to be dogmatic about the matter,
and to argue that, the transformation of the will being an un¬
intelligible mystery, we are at liberty to pass altogether to
another point of view at which the difficulty will disappear,!, e.
we may abandon the sphere of ethics. It may be noticed that the
attitude to a certain extent implies a confusion between selfishness
and ‘selfness’, and a consequent equal condemnation of them. We
have frequently had occasion to consider this view in connexion
with the Vedanta philosophy, and it would seem to take for
granted that ethical endeavour is and must always be deficient,
unless not only selfishness but also selfness can be transcended.
The mood is akin to that which Prof. Wenley ascribes to
Schopenhauer, ‘To gain perfection man must divest himself of
his own self-hood, and be received back again into the uncon¬
scious reality of will, where nothing is distinguishable.’ 1 . It is
a direct consequence of what we have seen to be the prevailing
Vedantic view of the relation of the individual soul to Brahman,
and we would thus seem to be justified in linking with this latter

» Wenley, Aspects of Pessimism, 263.

1 Deussen, 17.

174

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

view our treatment of the ethical doctrine of the Vedanta.
Depreciation of the individual seems to result inevitably in a
depreciation of ethics.

We have already seen 1 that according to Sankara, activity,
whether intellectual or practical, does not belong to the essence
of the soul, and is alien to the sphere in which the higher know¬
ledge moves. Works can give only transitory felicity and their
results are not carried forward into the ultimate condition of the
soul. They are ascetic rather than meritorious in that they do
not produce the higher emancipating knowledge but simply
prepare for it. Good works cannot improve the soul because,
being unchangeable, it is incapable of degrees of perfection.
Neither can works aiming at the establishment of valuable
social conditions be thoroughly efficacious. They may loosen
the bonds of selfishness by extending our interests so that they
become coincident with those of our fellows and we become
more perfect instruments of the common will. But we are
instruments still, and therefore not free in our own soul, and we
remain in bondage to the temporal, for even the most perfect
community is affected by the transitory characteristics of the
age to which it belongs.

We must here, of course, repeat our warnings against one¬
sided judgements, and avoid the conclusion that, because San¬
kara assigns only subordinate importance to works, this is
equivalent to saying that they have no importance at all. We
must freely admit, as Prof. K. Shastri so well and so vigorously
points out, 2 that there is a close connexion between Vedanta
teaching and the practice of the higher virtues, and that, on the
other hand, to press a phrase like ‘the enlightened man may live
as he pleases’, so as to make it support a charge of antinomianism,
is to do a grave injustice to the system as a whole. It may be
noticed, however, in passing, that European writers are not the
greatest sinners in respect of this charge. We find an Indian
judgement of the most severe type, e. g. in R. C. Bose’s book on
Hindu Philosophy. After describing the Pantheism of the Vedanta
by the harsh name ‘pandiabolism’, he goes on to say: The sys¬
tem has proved a refuge of lies to many a hardened sinner. The
perplexed minds which have found shelter in its solution of the

i p . iao. * K. Shastri, Chapter IV, passim.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 175

problem of existence are few indeed, but the number of wicked
hearts which have been composed to sleep by the opiate of its
false hope, is incalculable. 5 But, surely, in opposition to Mr.
Bose, we may be permitted to point out that ‘to live as one
pleases 5 may mean, not to neglect morality, but to be indepen¬
dent of rule with the superiority of the artistic to the mechanical
spirit and the freedom and joyousness of the former. There
is much truth in Prof. Radhakrishnan's saying that 4 The pure
and perfect are laws unto themselves 5 . 1 ,

But at the same time the question remains whether, when
all is said and done, the Vedanta can assign that ultimate
validity to ethics which would seem to be required if individual
and social life is to reach and abide in perfection. Is it indeed
necessary to hold that the highest ethical state and the highest
condition of the soul must be different from each other ? Can
we sympathize with Kirtikar when he asks, in reference to the
world of ethical action, ‘Of what value is a toy elephant to one
who understands that it is only a toy? 5 Or can we agree with
the dualism which is implied in his further queries and answers,
Ts philosophical truth to be sacrificed lest its recognition should
disturb the ethical ideal? 5 , and again, ‘Truth ought not to be
sacrificed to practical life 5 . 2 To many a very different point of
view would appeal with greater force; they would hold that if
such a contradiction were to arise, we should at least consider
the possibility of modifying, not truth itself—which is impos¬
sible—but our particular conception of truth. As Rashdall puts
it, ‘Our conception of the highest good may be inadequate, but
we certainly shall not attain to greater adequacy or a nearer
approach to ultimate truth by flatly contradicting our moral
judgements. It would be just as reasonable to argue that, be¬
cause the law of gravitation might be proved, from the point of
view of the highest knowledge, to be an inadequate statement
of truth, . . . therefore we had better assume that, from the
point of view of God, there is no difference between attraction
and repulsion. 53

Our main problem here may be put in the form of an inquiry
whether the ethical life can be maintained in its fullness on the

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 507. 3 Kirtikar, 106.

3 Rashdall, Philosophy and Religion, 68.

i 7 6 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

basis of that doctrine of abstract and unmodified identity be¬
tween ourselves and the characterless Absolute which would
seem to be the resultant of Sankara’s interpretation of the
Vedanta? Does not Ramanuja’s guidance seem preferable in
this connexion if we are to preserve the health of our ethical life;
if, when our precepts are pressed to their logical conclusions,
these are not, in the case of the less worthy, to permit of moral
deterioration or at least indifference, and, in the case of the more
worthy, to bring about the morally reassuring, but theoretically
disconcerting result that their practice will turn out to be con¬
siderably in advance of their principles. The more worthy
seem in the sphere of practical life to live more earnestly than
their principles encourage them to do, and as regards them
there is much truth in Mr. Archer’s saying that ‘Hindu philo¬
sophy is after all too human to be logical’. 1

Undoubtedly, the strict Vedantist would show a tendency to
answer in the negative this question as to whether ethics is
compatible with a doctrine of abstract identity, but, on the
ground that ethics does not belong to the highest level, the denial
would be made without any serious compunction. Gn the other
hand, this surrender of a valuable constituent of human life
seems to us to be without sufficient justification. Weare inclined
rather to inquire further into the reason for this dualism between
the identity conception and the ethical point of view, in the hope
that possibly the ideal may be stated in such a way as not to
necessitate a depreciation of ethics, which depreciation, we
repeat, seems to us to be an implicit criticism of any ideal which
involves it.

In citing objections on ethical grounds to this identity ideal
we must be careful not to make use of the crude charge of blas¬
phemy, a method of attack which formerly was favoured by
critics of the Vedantic position. It used to be argued that to
equalize man with God was ‘to arrogate divinity for humanity ;
and the suggestion was added that such an equation, when
applied to the individual, meant that each man could claim that
he was already godlike and therefore did not stand in need
of ethical improvement. The enthusiastic language of some
Vedantists, e.g. that of Swami Vivekananda in portions of his
1 India and the Future , 23.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 177

book on Jnanayoga, may have given colour to this criticism.
But we think that it is alien to the true meaning of the Vedanta,
and that the resulting attitude, though not perhaps the theoretical
basis, is more truly given in Prof. Radhakrishnan’s language in
reference to the Upanishads, ‘God is not in man in such obvious
fashion that he can possess Him absentmindedly and without
a struggle. God is present as sFpotentia or a possibility.. . . The
God in man is a task as well as a fact, a problem as well as a
possession. 51 Moreover, even as regards the theoretical aspect,
it is but just to notice that the criticism seems to proceed from
a slight misunderstanding of the point of view. The Vedantists
were not thinking primarily of ethical completeness but of a
fundamental identity above the ethical level. It seems unfair
therefore to subject them to charges which can have relevance
only on the ethical level. The true point at issue is why they
are so unwilling to be judged from the ethical standpoint, and
why they are so reluctant to permit our ethical aspirations
to find completion in an answering metaphysical reality. We
cannot at one and the same time accuse them of transcending
the ethical level and condemn them for claiming complete fulfil¬
ment of their ethical aspirations. We cannot pass judgement
against them in a court whose jurisdiction they deny, though
we may quite legitimately ask whether they are justified in
denying thejurisdiction, and whether their refusal is not seriously
prejudicial to the moral law, which they would desire to have
upheld except perhaps when they happen to be in an^ultra-
philosophical mood 5 . Yet the charge of blasphemy would seem
to have at the back of it, not the idea that the Vedantists avoid
ethical judgement, but that they claim ethical attainment, and
this latter accusation can certainly not be made in general terms.
Finally, we must remember that a charge of blasphemy is always
apt to provoke a reaction in the form of a counter-charge to the
effect that those who argue on the other side wish to minimize
the closeness of the connexion between man and God. This
would also be unjust, for the objection of the opponents of
identity is not to closeness of connexion but to the special
interpretation of that connexion as being expressible only in
terms of bare identity. Emphasis upon the identity conception

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 209.

N

x 7 8 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA
is peculiarly disastrous in respect of the claim of ethics to un¬
restricted jurisdiction and paramount importance in human life.
Ethics essentially demands a certain amount of transcendence
and objective reference both in the direction of other men and
in the direction of God. As regards the first or human reference
it is frequently argued that nothing could be more efficacious as
a spring of social service than this feeling of identity between
ourselves and other men. We can love our neighbour truly, it
is said, only if we can realize our oneness with our neighbour,
only if we can in thought obliterate all superficial and artificial
distinctions. It is possible to obey the injunction to love one’s
neighbour as oneself only if we can recognize our own self in
that of our neighbour. Deussen stresses this argument very
markedly, and a recent writer has applied it to modern social
conditions : ‘It seems at times that we may be approaching a
change whereby the universal self-consciousness 1 that inspires
life to-day, may be exchanged for a consciousness that sees the
whole as one; self-consciousness it is that has built up the form
of competitive society which we see everywhere and have seen
throughout history. A new reaction to life would produce in¬
evitably a new form of society.’ 1 But, in reply to this, it must be
noticed that a mere feeling of identity taken by itself may work
both ways. It may make us feel—and probably often does so—
that we should help our neighbour because he is one with us;
but logically it might quite as well enable us to argue that we
are justified in promoting our own interests because, our neigh¬
bour being one with us, his interests are identical with ours, and
therefore in promoting our interests we are ipso facto promoting
his. It might even, if we were to follow Schopenhauer s applica¬
tion of this thought, be used as a support of injustice. Why
should we grieve, he asks, over undeserved suffering falling
upon another, for, those who suffer on the one hand, and those
who, on the other hand, through wrongdoing either escape
suffering or cause suffering, are one and the same, and therefore
suffering in the last analysis really falls where it is due.-

The difficulty would appear to arise from a defect in the con¬
cept of identity. It is not differentiating enough to provide a

■ The word is here used apparently in the narrow and popular sense.

a Willcocks, Between the Old World and the New, 360.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 179

basis for social ethics. Absorption in another personality is a
metaphor derived from physical analogies and is not fully appro¬
priate to the more heterogeneous and more organic relations of
human beings. It is to be noticed that Vedantic teaching does
not properly detach itself from the original physical significance
of the metaphor, and constantly hovers between the idea of ab¬
sorption on the level of unconsciousness and absorption on the
level of consciousness. Social action is dependent indeed on
sympathy, but on an intelligent and imaginatively discriminating
sympathy which differentiates the object of sympathy from our¬
selves. Mere identity based on abstraction and negation can¬
not take the place of sympathy for the different, especially when,
over against this comparatively vague and weak bond of associa¬
tion, we have to take account also of the continuing influence
of the karmic idea, with its implications of externality and
individualism which serve to strengthen the popular assump¬
tion of non-transferable destinies. As Solovyof puts it, ‘The
removal of barriers between the self and the not-self, or im¬
mediate identification, is merely a figure of speech and not an
expression of real fact. Like the vibration of chords that sound
in unison, the bond of compassion between human beings is
not simply identity but harmony of the similar.’ 1

Further, an identification with others which is associated with
a denial of their reality as individuals is absolutely fatal to ethical
endeavour of a social character. If looking at human beings sub
specie aeternitatis and through the mediation of the concept of
strict identity leads us to regard them as small and insignificant,
if not almost futile, as individuals, we cannot direct our efforts
persistently towards their welfare. We can help men aright only
if we can regard them as existences having rights in themselves,
I ‘independent centres of action and sources of feeling’^whose
1 interests may not be absorbed in ours but with whom we may
enter into the unity of common aims. Social service demands
the reality of the social order and its members. As an Indian
writer puts it,j £ To live and work for the essentially untrue is
hardly an inspiring and convincing creed, and to think of others
when there is none else to be thought of, is almost to make a
mockery of intelligence.’ 3 J;

1 Solovyof, Justification of the Good, 68. a B. K. Shastri, 229.

i8o PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

In reference to God also, ethics, if it is to be properly estab¬
lished, demands transcendence and objectivity. The essence of
the ethical spirit is aspiration, and aspiration is possible only in
connexion with the ‘other—the ‘other 5 which is also the higher.
The conception of identity is useful in giving us confidence that
we have within us the potentiality of the divine, and that there¬
fore ethical endeavour is not meaningless. But if this concep¬
tion is pressed too far or too exclusively, it is apt to result in a
view which might render the ethical life superfluous. Prof.
Radhakrishnan has foreseen this danger and has done his best
to guard against it in the passage which we have quoted above. 1
But the danger is apt to recur with disconcerting frequency in
connexion with the Vedanta. If we are already one with God,
there is little point in striving ethically to become Godlike.
When there is identity, sufficient room is not left for the stages
of approach. When we have already arrived at a destination we
do not concern ourselves very much with the toilsome and dusty
road. It is an outgoing of desire and love which alone can
inspire ethical action in times of crisis, and indeed on ordinary
occasions also; and if the love is simply another form of the love
wherewith a man loves himself, its uplifting force is diminished.
An Indian writer protests in another connexion against the
charge that the Vedanta rouses no enthusiasm for God, by
pointing out that ‘it is obviously wrong to suppose that (the
devotee) has no love for Brahma, unless one is prepared to say
of him that he does not love himself 5 . 3 Now at first sight such
a statement has a superficial resemblance to Spinoza's doctrine
that our highest love to God is the love wherewith God loves
himself. But the emphasis is different, and this difference of
emphasis is all-important from the point of view of ethics. Our
starting-point makes all the difference. If, when we are thinking
of the identity of human and divine love, we think first of the
love wherewith God loves himself, we may lose little in respect
of inspiration as we carry the thought downwards to human
life. But if, on the other hand, we begin by saying that our
highest spring of action is a love similar to that wherewith we
love ourselves, then our ethical endeavour would seem to be
weakened at its very source; for to love oneself—in the case of
1 p.185. a Kirtikar, 121.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA i8i

the weak man at least—may demand very little effort. Ethics
cannot exist except in association with a feeling of uplift, and it
would seem to demand such an interpretation of aspiration to¬
wards God as is given by Solovyof: ‘However complete’, he
says,‘the feeling of our inner unity with God may be, it never
becomes a consciousness of mere identity, of simple meiging
into one. The feeling of unity is inseparably connected with the
consciousness that the Deity with which we are united, and
which acts and reveals itself in us, is something distinct and in¬
dependent of us, that it is prior to us, higher and greater than
we.’ 1 And in ethics there is further involved, as the essence of
the process, the establishment of harmony between the im¬
perfect in us and the objective perfection in God.

This leads to another thought. It may be argued that identity,
even though it leaves no room for ‘approach’, yet does not rule
out progress, inasmuch as it provides for recovery and return,
for ‘a becoming of the soul what it has always been, a revival of
its true nature’. 2 This would certainly relieve us greatly of our
difficulty, were the recovery based upon identification with a
God possessed of all perfect qualities. But when we have to do
with a characterless Brahman, recovery of identity with Him
means no thin g that has importance for ethics. It implies a re¬
lapse upon quietism, a virtual abandonment once more of the
ethical point of view. Now we are quite willing to admit that
this abandonment of the ethical struggle may frequently arise
from a vivid apprehension of the grace of God, and from a pro¬
found and praiseworthy feeling of dissatisfaction with our own
attainments, from the consciousness that what we actualize in
our character can never be adequate to the ideal. But is abandon¬
ment the only possible outcome of this feeling ? Because we are
dissatisfied, need we cease to struggle for satisfaction along the
lines which our duty has hitherto prescribed for us? Because
moral aspiration is insatiable, must the moral level be altogether
transcended ? Must we sink our ideal in the characterless- un¬
known depths of our own being, vaguely recognized as identical
with the Being of God? Should we not rather project our ideal
on to the heights of the Divine Reality, justified thereto by what
would seem to be the direct and obvious answer to the simple
1 Solovyof, op. cit., 164, 3 Muller, S. S. 168.

182 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA .

question as to whence came our ideal ? Surely our sense of the
inadequacy of our objective moral achievement does not de¬
mand that we should become merely subjective and negative.
Rather does it send our thoughts onward to the thought of a
fuller objective realization, not in us but in God.

But if this is so, then ethics refuses to be satisfied with a
characterless Absolute. It demands a Reality having a character
which may constitute our goal, however distant it may be from
our present attainment. And so we are led to ask whether the
difficulties in the way of finding a moral ideal in God are so
insuperable as many Vedantists would make out. Such objec¬
tions may be first of all connected with the depreciation of
activity in general. Action, according to the Vedantists, is ir¬
relevant in connexion with the highest knowledge, because ac¬
tion has to do with what has not yet come into existence, whereas
knowledge has to do with that which eternally is, that which is
not susceptible of increase or decrease, or of any kind of altera¬
tion. From this it follows, according to the argument we are
considering, that the Eternal self cannot be improved by the
addition of good qualities or the removal of defects. Therefore
moral predicates are out of place in connexion with any ultimate
and unchangeably real existence; for the conception of goodness
is unmeaning except in connexion with activity, and unless a
distinction of good from evil is allowed. The idea underlying
the reluctance to make use of moral characterization would thus
seem to be that goodness emerges from a sense of incomplete¬
ness and consequently from desire, and that when incomplete¬
ness and the longing to be rid of it are ruled out, then goodness
has no place.

But over and above our reluctance to accept the view that
desire is inherently evil, and the suspicion, which we share with
Mr. Archer, that the demand for the annihilation of desire is
a kind of ‘hedging 5 against destiny, 1 we cannot agree with the
further assumption that the goodness of a thing depends on our
desiring it. It is not good because we desire it; it is rather
desired because it is good, because it has inherent value, objec¬
tively and not merely subjectively, because it seems to have an
inalienable right to a significant place in a scheme of reality
1 Of. India and the Future , 73.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 183

having a definite character. Our sense of value is an apprecia¬
tion of objective conditions; and desire implies a recognition of
a standard of values not dependent on the desire itself. Thus,
even if we were to grant the contention that desire ought to dis¬
appear, the value would remain as a recognition of the ultimate
meaning of the world. If, on the other hand, we are indisposed
to go the length of allowing that all desire is evil, our demand
that there should be objective justification for our highest
desires is correspondingly strengthened. Further, although we
may be in the habit of applying the word ‘good’ to what shows
signs of a satisfactory measure of approach towards an ideal, yet
the word may also be applied simply as a description of the
highest we know; and the inapplicability to the Absolute of the
first sense need not preclude the application of the second.

Not only may we apply ethical predicates to the ultimate, but
it seems to us that we must do so, if our ethical struggle is not
to be meaningless and futile. Ethics, as we have contended,
demands a sphere of reality in which it may work, and a reason¬
able faith that the basis of this reality may be characterized in
such a way as to give strength and encouragement for the
struggle with certain disconcerting aspects of experience. Prof.
Radhakrishnan illustrates the need in his criticism of Buddhism
when he says that 'Buddhism establishes the enormous diffi¬
culty of having a pure morality independent of spiritual values’. 1
The problem of ethics is to deal with the evil and sorrow of the
world, and these cannot be dealt with adequately simply by
relegating them to a sphere of unreality. As Principal Galloway
puts it, 'Spiritual selves claim to be real, and our consciousness
of freedom and our sense of moral evil decline to be relegated
to the category of illusion.’ 2 Evil cannot be overcome by deny¬
ing its reality, especially when this is accompanied by a denial
of the reality of the good as well. Evil cannot be overcome by
negation, but only by a positive reality. We cannot agree with
Prof. Shastri that an unreal life can be worthy in the highest
sense. 3 Selfishness, e.g., can be overcome not by merely think¬
ing about its disappearance but by an assertion or at least a con¬
sciousness of objective unselfishness. All great virtues are the

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 608. 3 Religion and Modern Thought, 216.

3 Cf. B, K, Shastri, p. xxi,

i8 4 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

results of faith in a positive impact of goodness; and, ultimately,
we arrive at the necessity of a belief that the quality of goodness
can be used to describe the deepest reality of the universe, and
that we are not without justification for the assurance that help
for the combating of evil may come to us from the innermost
shrine of the Being of God.

To be told that, on the emergence of true knowledge, evil will
necessarily be thought out of existence is hardly sufficient to
comfort us whilst we are still struggling under untoward condi-
tions of everyday life; and in the face of actual sorrow, especially
that which comes to us from the suffering of others, whom we
love, to tell us that this suffering is an illusion is not far re¬
moved from pitilessness. We cannot, e.g., place ourselves very
readily at the point of view of Prof. Das Gupta, when he says,
The sorrow around us has no fear for us, if we remember that
we are naturally sorrowless and blessed in ourselves. The pes¬
simistic mood loses all terrors, as it closes in absolute optimistic
confidence in one’s own self and the ultimate destiny and goal
of emancipation.’ 1

The emphasis here is still laid upon deliverance and negative
freedom, upon the cultivation of a mood of philosophical de¬
tachment. And when, in the inevitable clash between such a
mood and the ordinary experience of life, our thought swings
over to the opposite extreme, we are not much helped, as regards
ethical support, by the doctrine of karma in the form in which
it appears in the Vedanta. This doctrine was intended by
Sankara to save us from uncomfortable questioning about the
justice of God. But we establish our theodicy—if, indeed, we
do establish it—at a very great price. Even if we slur over our
difficulties about the beginning of things, and accept the ex¬
planation that there is no beginning, we find that we are the
resultants of previous conditions which have been unfolding
themselves for untold ages. We are bereft of the privilege of
responsibility even for the evil that we do. We find that all
causality, after all, really belongs to God; or that we are in the
grasp of an inexorable destiny v^ithin whose processes there is
only cyclic change, and with regard to which there is no hope
of progress except in the negative sense that we may attain ever

1 Das Gupta, I. 77.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 185

more completely to the true knowledge which will give us, not
victory, but escape. Nothing seems to be provided between the
extremes we have indicated. It is a case of either bondage or
abstract freedom. We can escape only by thinking of our im¬
prisonment as a dream, and not by breaking down the walls of
the prison-house. We do not sublimate or consecrate the condi¬
tions of the actual, but stand apart from the perplexing prob¬
lems of ordinary life, apart in theory at least, if—fortunately—
not always in practice. And does the freedom which we are
promised satisfy the aspiring soul ? Is it the freedom that we
desire, or—to go one step farther back—can we rest in this
theoretical knowledge that there is a freedom without our
prison-house ? Rather is it the freedom of the desert, of the wide
empty spaces or the boundless sea:

So lonely ’twas that God himself

Seemed scarcely there to be. 1

And it is just possible that by its very vacuity such freedom
may become a new kind of bondage. Activity which can find no
outlet produces subjectively the same kind of feeling as restraint.
A character in a recent novel seems to express such a mood,

* “Ah”, she mocked, “wait till you’re so free that you just daren’t
do what you like. Wait till you’re so free that you can be here
one minute and there another. Wait till you are so free that you
can see the four walls of your freedom and the iron-bound door
that will let you out into the open air of slavery, if only there
were some one to open it .” y% A similar mood is set forth by
another writer who speaks of the great hours of experience when
The soul of man has . . . suddenly hated its so-called freedom
and returned to some bondage dearer than freedom’, and of the
transition ‘from a condition of “liberty” to some blessed state
of bondage’; adding the reflection, ‘perhaps the truth is that we
are made for bondage, but it must be bondage to something
which moves or to someone who loves’. 3 These quotations
suggest that there is a higher freedom than merely abstract and
negative freedom—a freedom which is hinted at in the well-
known words, ‘whose service is perfect freedom’, a freedom

1 Ancient Manner. s Michael Arlen, The Green Hat, 131,

„ 3 P r * J* A. Hutton, Guidance from Francis Thompson in Matters of
Faith, 49.

186 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

which is allied with interest in the actual, with a discernment
of the problems of the actual, and an attempt to solve these
through the inspiration of a faith that the ultimate purpose of
the actual and its essential meaning is the establishment of
the good. In other words we desire a freedom which will not
merely tell us that there is liberty outside the prison-house of
our lower desires and mundane existence, but which will enable
us to break down its walls and pass out, having victorious
strength of character in ourselves, and so desirous of the salva¬
tion of our fellows that the prison walls may not so easily close
again either upon them or upon us.

Asceticism and negation generally are meaningless, except as
J they are steps on the way to moral affirmation. We must pass
from negative to positive freedom. The former, when rein¬
forced by indifference, may give way before the downward
persistence of our lower desires; the latter lays hold on the prin¬
ciple of life, and cherishes the faith that all moral endeavour
will be taken up into and transformed by the deepest Power and
Order of the world—there shall not be one lost good. We must
not, of course, lose sight of the value that underlies the negative
attitude to morality. It is right that we should not, through
over-scrupulous attention to the means, lose sight of the end of
our moral endeavour; and negation may simply be an exaggera¬
tion of the warning against legalism. But it is equally necessary
that we should not transform a subject attitude of caution into
a metaphysical conclusion, and deny to morality any place in
the ultimate end; we should not so conceive the end as to de¬
prive the means of all importance. It is for us rather to

Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend—

Seeking a higher object. 1

If our aim is simply to get out of the samsara, then we shall not
be encouraged to faithful observance of the stages of the pro¬
cess. A doctrine of metaphysical emptiness may not be very far
removed from moral indifference, unless we are willing to look
upon morality not merely as a disciplinary struggle, but as a
positive achievement. After all, end and means are correlative
conceptions, and the end can have significance only if the means

1 Wordsworth, Laodamia.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 187

also are taken as real. As has been said, ‘It is the peril of the
Mystic that he is inclined to forget the Way in the end. The
peril of the man of Reason is that he cannot see the end for the
dust he raises by the way.’ 1 We may add that it is the duty of
the moral philosopher to avoid the extremes of both the Mystic
and the man of Reason.

We have been urging that, if morality is to have a proper
basis, it requires objectification or a reaching outwards to a
Divine Reality of positive moral character; but we must em¬
phasize also the necessity of a feeling of reality in regard to our
subjective point of initiation. Ethics cannot be secure if as¬
sociated with a depreciation of personality. And we demand
not only a feeling of reality but a feeling of value. It should be
impossible to describe the individual soul in the words even of
Ramanuja—usually inclined towards a more positive attitude—•
as f a mere wretched glow-worm\ z In drawing attention to the
need of personal persistence we must not be thought to be
laying ourselves open to the charge of selfishness or concern
with material reward either in this world or the next. Despite
any possible misunderstandings, we cannot relinquish the idea
that the completion of personal efficiency is an essential element
in the moral ideal, or the demand that we shall be allowed to
find ourselves again in an eternal Reality receptive of the good.
Personality must be regarded, not as an accident or anomaly,
but as normal to the universe. In fact we may relate the argu¬
ment to the present tense rather than to the future, and we may
'point out that our present appreciation of reality is essentially
bound up with the exercise of our personality, and that we
cannot sacrifice this without reducing our life, as well as our
hopes, to the vagueness and instability of a dream. So from the
present we may pass to the future as to an extension of the same
consciousness, and, considering both present and future together,
may quite naturally point out that if the life of the individual is
not to be continued in the future, a feeling of impuissancede
vivre will descend upon him, and he will be inclined to take up
an attitude of indifference even in regard to the present. We
are not urging that, with the loss of the hope of personal im-

1 Joergens, art. in Time and Tide } Sept. 1924.

2 S. B. E, XLVIII. 469.

188 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

mortality, the fear of hell will be lessened and the expectation
of reward will disappear. Our argument has a deeper basis; we
are thinking rather of contribution than of claim, and all that
we ask is the continuance of the opportunity to make that con¬
tribution. If, as we think is the case, our contribution cannot
be separated from ourselves and consists rather in what we are
than in what we give, all that we ask is that this gift of our
personality itself may be assigned a place of permanent value in
the ultimate constitution of things. We believe that the perfec¬
tion of the whole cannot be secured without the perfection,
permanence, and utmost expansion of the parts—which parts
we are. And if the high philosopher still shakes his head in
unbelief, and speaks, wistfully, if not contemptuously, of pious
wishes divorced from facts, we may quote in support of our
contention for the reality of the individual the common-sense
appeal of Sir Oliver Lodge : 4 If any philosopher tells you that
you do not exist, . . . that you are an automaton without free¬
will, that all your actions are determined by outside causes—■
then appeal must be made to twelve average men, unsophis¬
ticated by special studies. This is not an appeal to the mob as
against the philosopher, but an appeal to the experience of un¬
told ages against the studies of a generation.^ s

In our discussion of the place of works in the Vedantic system
we have already spoken of the difficulty, within that system,
of arriving at any practical conception of the Kingdom of God.
Wofks of social service are regarded certainly as one of the best
means of purifying the soul, but as little more. In fact the
further idea is hinted at that, if the permanence of the results
of unselfish labours is dwelt upon, the individual will become
the prisoner of the good he has wrought and thus fail to win
deliverance. It were better therefore, it is urged, that this
world should be regarded simply as a place of sanctification and
atonement, and that no thought of the establishment of a king¬
dom of righteousness should obsess the soul. It were better
that the enlightened man should remember that 'all relations
lose their significance in the one eternal life'. 3

In such a position once more the foundations of ethics would
seem to be weakened. At our highest, we strive for the estab-
1 Quoted in the ffibbert Journal, July 1926. 2 Kirtikaiyi22.

PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA 189

lishment not only of personal but of social values, and, unless we
can feel that there is a promise of the permanence of the results
of such efforts, in the upbuilding of a community of free and
noble spirits, the efforts themselves are apt to slacken. We
desire that from our ultimate ideal we may derive an incentive
for the service of the community; and we feel that, if the way is
blocked in this direction, our moral life in its highest exercise
will become futile, and bereft also of the inspirational value of
association with the good in other lives. From the conception
of the true Self which is so strongly emphasized in the Vedanta,
such a way of expansion ought to open out. As Happel puts it,
'The true Ego is present only in elementary form in separate
human individuals. It is only in organic communion with others
that it wins its higher potentiality, and it attains its complete
fullness only in the personality of God, in communion with
whom separate personalities can reach their truest development
and independence, so that God then truly is all in all.' 1

But our final question is whether in the Vedanta such a way
of emergence and expansion has been left open ? We are doubt¬
ful if this question can be answered in the affirmative. In
application to the Vedanta there is much truth in the words of
Gaird, 'To remain at the negative point of view is as disastrous
as never to have reached it. For to deny the place of passion
and desire is to cut oneself off from all concrete human interests;
to shut the spirit up in the cell of its own self-contained inde¬
pendence instead of finding a home for it in the wide world of
human good/ 3 Eucken also complains in special reference to
the Vedanta of the cleavage which it introduces between The
height of the inner life and the rest of existence’, and complains
that by its method 'man attains a purely inward life and that
there is no path leading from this inwardness to the wide field
of life’. 3 For a judgement of much the same character as Eucken’s,
but in our opinion excessively severe, we may compare Archer’s
India and the Future, 73.

'There is something no doubt in the rule of practical philosophy
which bids us not found the livability of life upon external satisfac-

'■ 1 Happel, 175. ■

3 Life of Caird, 314.

3 Cf. also the present writer’s Pantheism and the Value of Life, 331 ff.

190 PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE VEDANTA

tions but rather upon internal resources of which nothing can deprive
us. Up to a certain point this is true wisdom; carried beyond that
point it lands us in sheer inanities of egoism which strike at the root
of all human association. This is so evident that Indian thinkers
have expended a great deal of ingenuity in the attempt to reconcile
a philosophy which denies all value to life with an ethical system
based, as all ethical systems must be, on the assumption that life is
supremely valuable and the test of all other values. . . . The doctrine
of detachment, passionlessness, indifference, as a cure for the in¬
herent evil of existence, is not a profound one at all, but is merely
the exaggeration of a common and somewhat pusillanimous mode of
procedure. In its exaggerated form it is violently anti-social and
consequently incompatible with any rational system of ethics.

The demand for modification and reconstruction which we
have made from the point of view of ethics really leads us on to
the religious demand that God should be brought, not into
negative, but into positive organic relation with the world; that
He should enter into contact with history and the present en¬
deavours of men, that He should take into and upon Himself the
burden of the suffering and evil of the world and of our misuse
of human freedom, that He should redeem us from our unfitness
and our evil, and welcome us to fullness of communion and ser¬
vice and to a permanent place of value in His kingdom. A love
of the world and of the human beings in it, a trust in it and in
them planted at the very heart of God, and a readiness to give
His very self for the redemption of the world, or in the language
of the New Testament ‘to give His only begotten Son’, can alone
satisfy the hearts of men.

We shall consider the religious value of the Vedanta in our
concluding chapter, but before we go on to this most important
topic of all, we may set our whole discussion in clearer light by
devoting a chapter to a comparison of Vedantic teaching with
certain conceptions of modern philosophy.

VIII

SOME COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA
AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

E VEN the briefest study of speculation in other parts of the
world will have the result of deepening the impression of
the unity of human thought. It is possible to find parallels to
Vedantic teaching in many Western systems, and illustrations
of cases in which like elements in fundamental assumptions are
followed by conclusions also similar serve to make more obvious
the essential and wholly natural implications of such elements.
In this section we shall take ‘modern* in the wide sense usually
accepted in histories of philosophy, and for the most part,
though not entirely, we shall confine our attention to those
philosophies which present broad similarities to the Vedanta,
especially in respect of intellectualistic tendency.

A study of the Vedanta inevitably invites comparison first of
all with Spinoza amongst ‘modern* philosophers. Even in the
diverse judgements which have been passed upon him there are
suggestive parallels, for, just as in the Vedanta, it seems difficult
to assess the comparative importance of the mystical and in¬
tellectual elements. On the one hand he has been called ‘a God-
intoxicated man*.: When Renan unveiled the Spinoza monu¬
ment in The Hague, he pointed reverently to the windows of the
house where Spinoza died, and said,.‘Maybe it was from there
that God was seen nearest,’ and a recent critic, who was, in
general, not given to emotion, had to confess that ‘one cannot
read Spinoza in cold blood*. 1 On the other hand he has been
described as an atheist and as ‘caring little for the world pro¬
vided it were only one*. In 1678, one year after his death, his
Opera Posthuma was anathematized as ‘a godless book the like
of which did not exist from the beginning of the world till now*, f
and there have been echoes of this judgement ever since. The 7
starting-point of Spinoza’s philosophy is to be found in that
aversion from the ordinary point of view, that discontent with
the merely given, which we have found to be characteristic of
the Vedanta, and his goal also reveals that close unity between

1 Iverach, Descartes and Spinoza, 132.

igz COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

philosophical and religious interest which we have found to be
characteristic of the earlier school of thought.

It might be said with some amount of truth that Spinoza
combines in himself the tendencies manifested both in Sankara
and Ramanuja. He shows affinity with the former, in that he
also regards God as the characterless infinite, in relation to
which all determination is negation; and he connects himself
with the latter in conceiving of God as the abode of all auspicious
qualities, as that which ‘has absolutely infinite attributes of
which each expresses infinite essence in its own kindVj Spinoza
wavers between a negation of the world which is reminiscent
for us of Sankara’s strict monism, and an accommodation to
ordinary experience which recalls Ramanuja’s rehabilitation of
the actual world. The relation between the individual and God
is stated by him at times in terms of the identity relation of
Sankara, and at other times he attributes to the individual an
internal self-activity which is compatible only with Ramanuja’s
ideal of communion as the final phase of religious attainment.
It must be confessed, however, that the self-activity has no real
place in his system, and his want of adequate provision for this
reminds us of Ramanuja’s difficulties in adjusting divine and
human causality, and in connexion with Spinoza himself it pro¬
voked the reaction towards individualism which followed imme¬
diately in the philosophy of Leibniz. But on the whole the
closer affinity is with Sankara rather than with Ramanuja, at
least if we confine ourselves to the logically consistent parts of
Spinoza’s system. Although there is not in Spinoza the same
abrupt separation between the higher and the lower orders of
knowledge as in the Indian thinker, yet the higher, for the most
part, turns out to be the negation of the lower rather than a
development out of it. In both philosophers there is a strict
adherence to the intellectual point of view and an almost exclu¬
sive reliance upon the activity of the mind as a means of obtain¬
ing deliverance. The means of escape for Spinoza are^adequate
ideas’^ and, when in the individual life disturbance and misery
are caused by our passions, it is by the power of the understand¬
ing that we may escape from their sway.\‘There is no modifica¬
tion of the body whereof we cannot form some clear and distinct

1 Ethics, I. 16.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 193
conception,’ and, ‘An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be
a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof. 1
Here we have a close parallel to Sankara’s principle that the
feeling of pain is due merely to the error of false imagination .
At the same time we may notice in passing a slight difference
in the operation of the enlightened understanding in the two
philosophers. Spinoza is more inclined to dwell upon the
application of knowledge to particular cases of the incidence of
passion, and would attribute efficacy to the systematizing of the
causes of passion according to ordinary scientific procedure;
whereas Sankara is much more uncompromisingly negative, and
is occupied with the general or total effect of emancipating
knowledge in delivering us from the sum of conditions under
which passions can be detrimentally operative.

But although there may be a difference in degree of intensity
of application, the acosmistic tendency is strong in both philo¬
sophers. By obedience to the higher knowledge we are to turn
away our attention from the things of the world and withdraw
into the depths of the soul. And just as in the Vedanta the root
idea is the identification of Atman and Brahman, so with.
Spinoza also it is by the deeper knowledge of the self within
that we reach unity with the universal Self or God. This intense
aspiration after unity leads Spinoza to a negative attitude to¬
wards the world and to a more or less abstract conception of
God. Spinoza certainly bids farewell to the world with greater
reluctance than Sankara, and his unity is always more open in
the direction of diversity. His highest knowledge has been
described as ‘thoughtfulness matured to inspiration’, and the
idea of maturity very properly suggests the idea of gradual
growth. But still, though the departure may be lingering and
ultimately so formal as to permit of surreptitious return, the
farewell is an important gesture. We are made to feel that
extension as admitting of divisibility is a defective category,
and that duration as permitting degrees is inapplicable to God.
Our ordinary conceptions and classifications which aid us in
our apprehension of the particular modes of being belong after
' all to the realm of illusion; it is in unity alone that we can find
satisfaction. On the intellectual side there is perhaps a parallel
1 Ethics, V. 3 and 4. 3 S. B. E. XXXVIII. .64#

O

194 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

between Sankara’s conception of Ultimate Being as self-lumi¬
nous, arid Spinoza’s idea that Substance cannot be knowable
except as self-luminous, because, if it were otherwise luminous,
it would have qualities implying its dependence on other things.

So negative and abstract is Spinoza’s thought that he really
provides no proper passage from the undifferenced unity of
Substance to the variety of the attributes. In striving to effect
such a transition Spinoza finds himself in difficulties which have,
in turn, involved his interpreters in seemingly interminable con¬
troversies as to the relation of attributes to substance within
his system, exactly the difficulties over again of the Vedantic
transition from the non-qualitative to the qualitative Brahman.
Do the attributes constitute the essence of Spinoza’s substance
or are they only fictions of the human intellect? If the former,
what becomes of the doctrine of the undifferenced unity of
Brahman; if the latter, whence came the minds capable of con¬
structing the fictions ? If all ordinary experience belongs to the
region of names and forms—-to borrow a Vedantic phrase—will
not thd imaging intellect also be a mere reflection, and partake
of the ^general illusoriness, and whence can come the energy
necessary for framing the illusion and becoming dissatisfied with
it, as well as that general capacity for persistence which is so
fundamental an element in Spinoza’s philosophy? If it is
suggested in reply that these difficulties are themselves illusory,
and will disappear with the disappearance of the illusion, we are
simply compelled to press the question farther back and ask
whence came the illusory point of view at all, for even an illusion
must have a cause.

In attempting to deal with this latter question—implicitly or
explicitly put—Spinoza finds himself in much the same difficulty
as Sankara in relation to the doctrine of maya. If the Absolute
has first of all been defined as undifferentiated and changeless,
it is impossible to get any creative energy out of it. And yet our
ordinary experience—just because it is our experience—demands
some explanation—demands the establishment of some rela¬
tion between that experience and the ultimate reality. This
demand can be speciously satisfied only by a conception which,
like the Vedantic maya, hovers between being and non-being;
or, like the infinite modes of Spinoza, bridges only very ineffec-

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 195
tively the gulf between static unity and dynamic multiplicity.
Both are illogical attempts to prevent the finite world becoming,
as Prof.Rogers puts it,‘a mere impertinence in the system , but
into the further details of this parallel, theoretically illegitimate
but practically most useful, it is not necessary to enter.

We are more concerned with the effect of Spinoza’s views
upon the importance of the individual both now and in any life

_or lives—to come, and here we get another illustration of

the fundamental deficiency of any purely intellectual system.
Spinoza leaves no true place for the individual. As Caird says,
‘The idea of God on which Spinoza’s whole system is ostensibly
based, is one which involves the denial of any reality or inde¬
pendence to the finite.’* And Spinoza obtains deliverance from
the distressing aspects of the world—from its pain and its
sorrow and its evil—partly by indifference and partly by acqui¬
escence. In actual life he was detached from ordinary human
concerns; he lived through one of the most exciting periods of
European history, and yet practically no reference to public
affairs is to be found in his works. As Prof. Santayana puts it.
‘Lodged in his corner of the great house of nature he felt him¬
self humble, pensioned and at peace. He was proud of that
great house and its glories; he venerated its economy, and never
dreamt of reforming it .’3 This outward indifference was but the
reflection of the internal attitude which seeks the solution of
problems in thought alone and ends in escape rather than
victory. For him distinction between good and evil was but
a conditional and purely human contrivance, and was trans¬
cended in the Absolute. But although Spinoza had a stronger
sense of the importance of society and a more modern and more
sublime conception of the significance of natural law as revealed
by science and interpreted by art, and, in consequence, never
surrendered himself to the Vedantic extreme of indifference,
yet when the p endulum of his thought swings over to an acknow¬
ledgement of the reality of the cosmos, he was apt, in his reac¬
tion from indifference, to fall a victim to a conception of inexor¬
able necessity and a denial of any true freedom to man. There
is a parallel here to Sankara’s transition from negation to a

1 History of Philosophy, 305. # Caird, Spinoza, 298.

3 Introduction to Spinoza’s Ethics, p. ix.

i 9 6 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

modified acknowledgement of the law of karma. But neither in
the negation of evil nor in the admission of its necessity, nor in
freedom so restricted as almost to pass over into its opposite,
can there be any abiding satisfaction for the soul of man.

The freedom which he allows is that of complete identifica¬
tion with the Divine thought, and he expresses the unity through
the help of the conception of the‘intellectual love of God’. The
choice of the term might seem to arise from a sense of human
worth and an inescapable consciousness of the reality of human
endeavour, and it suggests the possibility of establishing a real
and enduring relation between the individual and God. But
Spinoza does not bring out the full significance of the term.
Our love to God turns out to be the love wherewith God loves
himself. In a very real sense Spinoza believes that a man
becomes that of which he thinks. To think high thoughts is
indeed the important influence in moral elevation. But when
the process reaches the highest level, we find that (according to
him) to think high thoughts is to become identified with our
thought. The relation of identity is predominant and all
differentiation disappears. In this way we get, no doubt, assur¬
ance of immortality, for ‘the spirit shares the fate of the object
with which it identified itself, . . . and in caring for the eternal,
it has ceased to care for that part of itself which can die’. 1 But
our permanence is simply the permanence in God of our true
thought, and does not carry with it the permanence of the
thinker who formed the thought. Prof. Pringle-Pattison speaks
truly of Spinoza’s 1 ‘substitution of the eternal life of thought
. , . for immortality in the usual sense of a continued personal
existenceV and it is this depreciation of continued personal
existence which seems to be significant of the total effect of
Spinoza’s system. |

It might be interesting by way of contrast to follow out some
of the consequences in the immediately succeeding Leibnizian
philosophy of a revolt against this depreciation of the individual,
and to find in the transition from Spinoza to Leibniz a parallel
to some of the more striking differences between Sankara and
Ramanuja. Leibniz, like Ramanuja, was disturbed by the fact
that in the philosophy which preceded him the whole had seemed
1 Santayana, op. cit. xviii. s Idea of Immortality, 150.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 197

to swallow up the parts. Leibniz wished to hold fast to the
principle of continuity, which might be said to be the result on
the scientific level of a monism showing signs of a modification
of its strictness. He also allowed, with Spinoza, the inadequacy of
many of our. ordinary categories, holding, e.g., that the form
of space, because of the infinite divisibility of any extended
substance, would not enable us to reach any distinct reality of
the individual. But at the same time, he was unwilling to
abandon the reality of the individual, and conserved it in his
doctrine of monads, which emphasized the idea that the reality
of substance was intensive rather than extensive. He thus
showed a tendency in the same direction as Ramanuja, although
he went very much farther than the latter in his search for
a satisfactory basis of individuality.

It is curious also to notice that the difficulties which we have
found to emerge in the Vedanta regarding the proper distribu¬
tion of responsibility for the suffering and evil of the world
between God and man reappear in Leibniz. Wb found that
Sankara in treating this problem had to take refuge in what was
little more than a bare contradiction—‘The Lord indeed causes
it (the individual soul) to act, but it acts itself.’ 1 Similarly,
Leibniz, while showing that the soul is not determined to act
from outside, yet, inasmuch as he holds that the individual is
determined by the law of its own nature and that for that nature
it is entirely dependent on God, escapes no more than Sankara
from the necessity of refunding all causality ultimately into God.

Before leaving Leibniz we may call attention to an interesting
contrast between him.and the Vedanta in respect of the former’s
law of the three stages of development. In the Vedanta we
found that there were three stages of the soul’s progress—from
ordinary waking consciousness, through dreaming sleep, to
dreamless sleep J in Leibniz there are also three stages through
which the monads may ascend from the lowest to the highest
kind of perception. But the order is exactly reversed. The
lowest are those which exist in a state of slumber or swoon, the
middle class have attained to the phase of confused dreaming,
whereas the highest of all have arrived at clear waking conscious¬
ness. The point is of small importance in itself, but it may
1 S. B. E. NXXVIII. 60.

198- COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

illustrate the great difference in total mental attitude between
the Leibnizian philosophy and the Vedanta.

From this digression we may turn back to systems presenting
more of similarity with than of contrast to the Vedanta. We
have in the course of our discussion already touched at con¬
siderable length on possible comparisons between the Vedanta
and Kant, and we may devote a few paragraphs to the considera¬
tion of the philosophy of Fichte, which will, we think, afford
further illustrations of the diminishing importance of the indi¬
vidual in any system of mystical or intellectualistic speculation,
having identity as a fundamental concept.

Prof. Rudolf Otto, in one of his recent addresses, speaks of
the likeness between Sankara and Fichte as being so striking
that one might almost speak of the rebirth of Indian philosophi¬
cal speculation in a German personality. 1 There is of course no
direct relationship, but the gaze of both thinkers is turned in
the same direction. With both, the pure Being, which is pure
thought, is an absolute unity without variety, and relationship
with it is attained by a higher kind of knowledge or intuition
which is to be very carefully distinguished from the ordinary
operations of the understanding. The ultimate Being is un¬
changeable and without creative energy, and in order to pass
from it to the ordinary world we must posit a power which
Fichte describes in terms almost identical with those which
Sankara applies to may a. This appears to Prof. Otto to be the
most surprising parallel of all, and it is indeed so striking that
Fichte’s actual words may be quoted^ 4 There is only the One,
unchangeable and eternal, and there is nothing beyond Him.^
All changeable and alterable is therefore most certainly nothing. ^
And its appearance is most certainly empty illusion. That I
know. 1

On the other hand, Fichte is less inclined than Sankara to
favour the idea of a world-illusion, and emphasizes rather the
idea that the responsibility for the illusion rests upon the con¬
ceptual and discursive understanding of the individual thinker.
Also, Fichte, notwithstanding his acceptance of the principle of
unchangeableness, does not keep so consistently to this as does
Sankara. He is inclined to modify it to a far greater extent and

1 Of. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Akademie f T)&c* 1925.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 199

opposes resolutely the idea of a God who is lifeless and static.
Although our salvation is still according to Fichte based upon
the relationship of identity between us and the divine, this rela¬
tionship will express itself in a life of action, even under the
conditions of our present existence. The door of admission to
the active service of humanity is opened wider with Fichte than
with Sankara, because he conceives of God as active. But on
the other hand, because the ideal relationship is for him still
one of identity, the door is not opened quite far enough, and,
because of ultimate metaphysical negation leading to a deprecia¬
tion of the individual, the desire for entrance is greatly weakened.
As Schelling puts it in his interpretation of Fichte: ‘The goal
of the finite Ego is enlargement of its sphere till the attainment
of identity with the infinite Ego. But the infinite Ego knows no
object, and possesses, therefore, no consciousness or unity of
consciousness, such as we mean by personality. Consequently,
the ultimate goal of all endeavour may also be represented as
enlargement of the personality to infinity—that is to say, as its
annihilation. The ultimate goal of the finite Ego—and not only
of it but also of the Non-Ego,—the final goal, therefore, of the
world—is its annihilation as a world .’ 1 1 This quotation brings
together in significant conjunction abstraction as regards the
ultimate principle and negation as regards the world and the
individual.

Before tur nin g to the broader and more intellectual develop¬
ment associated with Hegel and his followers, we may, in slight
alteration of chronological order, make a passing reference to
Schopenhauer. He is specially interesting for our purposes
because of the vehemence with which he avows his indebted¬
ness to Indian philosophy, not so much for explicit statements
of detailed conclusions as for the expression of a general spirit
and of fundamental principles. He considers that his own
principles are almost exactly similar to those of the earlier
thinkers, and would independently lead to the same results.
We find both in him and in them the same detachment from the
or dinar y interests of life, the same yearning after deliverance,

1 Schelling, VomlchalsPrindp der Philosophie, quoted in Seth’s Hegelian-
ism and Personality, 59.

200 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

the same abstractness of procedure ? the same inclination to¬
wards an annihilating identification with a characterless infinite
Reality. It is interesting also to notice the close connexion which
Schopenhauer suggests between himself and Spinoza. He prides
himself on having been born exactly one hundred and eleven
years and one day after Spinoza, and evidently considers that
the mantle of the earlier philosopher had fallen upon his
shoulders.

Schopenhauer finds it easy to reach the point of view at
which the world appears to be an unreality. He tells us that
v ‘he to whom man and all things have not appeared as phantoms,
has no capacity for philosophy’. 1 Consequently, he disregards
altogether the temporal developments of history, crushing the
centuries together as he would the sections of a telescope, on
the principle that we can learn nothing from the things of time
except the necessity of going beyond them; and no doubt
remembering also his conviction or experience that the transi¬
tion from common knowledge to enlightenment cannot be a
gradual attainment but takes place suddenly. The ultimate
reality is will; not consciousness, as in the Vedanta, but this
will, equally with the Vedantic ultimate, is characterless, and
the ideal relationship with it is absorption. In regard to this
absorption there may indeed be several degrees of completeness,
but the goal is that we should sink into a sheer sense of identity
with the Ultimate. Even in stages before the final The true
world in idea arises only when subject and object reciprocally
fill and penetrate each other completely’. 2 Further, ‘whoever
becomes so absorbed and lost in the perception of nature that
he only continues to exist as the pure knowing subject, becomes
in this way directly conscious that, as such, he is the condition,
that is, the support of the world and all objective existence, for
this now shows itself as dependent on his existence ’.3
This identification (set forth almost in Fichtean language)
with the underlying restless striving will can provide no support
for a sense of the value of the individual. His consciousness of
individuality is a mere illusion, and immortality can consist only
in the destruction of this illusion. Meanwhile an anticipation of
essential identity may, as we have seen, make one patient in

1 Schopenhauer, 497. Mb. 235. 3 lb. 234.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 201

suffering injustice and unperturbed in inflicting it, just in so
far as the doer or the sufferer is influenced by the consideration
that those who inflict injury and those who suffer it are one and
the same.

Yet identity with this cosmic will cannot give final peace and
rest according to Schopenhauer, for even the cosmic will is not
absolute. Beyond the striving of the will he seems to descry a
state of being in which it returns upon itself and ceases to be.
Nothingness, at the dark impression of which he tells us we
must not be alarmed, seeing that it is that ‘which we discern
behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal’, would seem to
be the consummation of our striving and our final verdict upon
the world.

In approaching the Hegelian philosophy it is tempting to
rush at once to comparisons and allow the Hegelian opposition
between Being and non-Being to remind us of the Vedantic
Sat and Asat. But the parallel would hardly be exact, seeing
that the Being of the Vedanta (whether unqualified or qualified)
is the ultimate reality, whereas with Hegel Being is merely the
simplest and least adequate interpretation of reality. Further,
the relation between the two terms is on the whole more exclu¬
sive and finally oppositional in the Vedanta than in Hegel. We
might be on surer ground, indeed, if we were to compare maya
with the Hegelian principle of negation from which Hegel
shows a tendency to derive a principle of actualization. Kirtikar,
e.g., describes maya and avidya as ‘neither more nor less than
this negative aspect of Being explaining the Becoming’. 1

It will perhaps be most useful to place Hegel in relation to the
Vedanta through the mediation of a consideration of Schelling’s
position. The latter, after the manner of the stricter Vedanta,
practically sacrifices difference to unity. He is inclined towards
an Absolute which is like ‘the night in which all cows are black’
—to use Hegel’s phrase. It is the vigour of the human imagina¬
tion which is responsible for the differences which emerge in
our construction of experience, and these differences must, if
regarded from the proper point of view, be taken as unreal in
comparison with the one pure identity* Hegel is altogether

1 Kirtikar, 10.

202 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

opposed to the abstraction which results in this annihilation of
difference. The ultimate identity must be one which goes out
into, and realizes itself through difference. As he puts it, ‘the
Absolute is to be apprehended not as Substance but as Subject’,
and he interprets this to mean that, as in the unity of our self-
consciousness we can hold together a diversity of presentations,
so in the Absolute the particularity of the world may persist
without the suppression of difference, so long, at least, as we
consider the relationship between unity and diversity in its
static and not in its developmental aspect.

But, on the other hand, in this statement Hegel puts himself
alongside the Vedantist in respect of the centrality of thought
in the universe. A Subject is essentially a thinking being, and
it is therefore through thought alone that we reach penetration
into real being and arrive at an identity comparable to that of
the Vedantic formula, ‘That art Thou 5 . Indeed, so centrally
important is thought in Hegel’s system that he has been
accused, as is well known, of turning a Logic—or at least an
Epistemology—into a Metaphysic, and reducing reality to a
‘bloodless ballet of categories’. Prof. Pringle-Pattison definitely
accuses Hegelianism of ‘converting an identity of type into
a numerical unity of existence’, 1 i.e. of passing from the con¬
sideration that all men think uniformly in their unifying pro¬
cesses of thought, to the idea that a unitary thinker thinks in all
of them and that they and all their experiences are nothing but
thoughts of this Universal Mind. He holds that the Hegelian
position is ‘reached by hypostatizing the notion of self-con¬
sciousness and not by any progress from reality. There is, in
fact, no bridge between this hypostatized conception and the
world of real things and real men.’ 2 To a very considerable
extent we may agree with this criticism, but, in passing, it may
be noted that it rather leaves out of account the consideration
that, after all, identity of type means something. Men do not
think alike unless there is something in their nature which con¬
strains them to do so, and therefore the uniformity of their
thought is significant of their place in the universe, and may be
a fact of such importance as to be worthy of metaphysical
status.

1 Hegelianism and Personality y 69.

Ib. 171.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 203

But be this as it may, the parallel between Hegel’s conception of
thought as fundamental and certain Vedantic ideas is sufficiently
striking. As the Vedanta speaks of the creative forth-bursting
force of the Word (and of the underlying thought) so Hegel
speaks of the idea ‘freely letting itself go’ into the externality of
space and time, and of the idea as ‘resolving to determine itself
as an external Idea’. ‘The absolute freedom’, he says, ‘of the
Idea consists in this, that it resolves to let the element of its
particularity go forth freely from itself as Nature.’ 1 2 * Kirtikar
compares this, as was indicated above, to the ‘Vedantic con¬
ception of Being proj ecting itself through its power called Maya! ?
It resembles also the Upanishad passage, ‘Let me be many, let
me go forth.’ It is doubtful, however, whether Hegel, in
emphasizing the centrality of thought, would have reached the
same abstractness in regard to thought as Sankara did. He
would not, e.g., have abolished the distinction between thought
and a thinker, but would rather have taken up the position of
Ramanuja, and associated the universal thought with a universal
thinker. In this he would have agreed with Prof. Pringle-
Pattison when the latter says, ‘Thought exists only as the
thought of a thinker; it must be centred somewhere. To
thought per se we can attribute neither existence nor causal
activity; and, this being so, it can have no place in existence as
a theory of Being .’3

Neither would Hegel—ostensibly at least—have assigned to
this pure identity of thought in which all things originate that
position of aloofness and almost of superciliousness which we
find in the rigorous monism of the Vedanta. There is with him
at least no explicitly expressed idea that, when we turn to the
particularity of the world, we are launching ourselves on a pro¬
cess of degradation. In fact, he says in his Philosophy of Religion
that ‘spirit which does not appear, is not’. 4 He seeks to preserve
the unity of significance and value even amidst the differences.
Even though he desires to begin with the purely philosophical
point of view and would almost say, as Caird points out, that
we can only reach the infinite if we deny or cast loose from the

1 Werke, 414. Cf. Pringle-Pattison, Hegelianism and Personality , 112.

2 Kirtikar, 66. 3 Hegelianism and Personality, 78.

4 Vol. I. 26 (Speirs and Sanderson’s Trans.).

204 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

finite, 1 yet he does not separate so abruptly as Sankara between
lower and higher orders of knowledge. He recognizes the un¬
broken continuity between the scientific and the philosophical
procedure, and holds, as Caird again points out in another
connexion, that, £ if philosophy requires of the individual
that he should lift himself into the pure ether of thought,
on the other hand the individual has a right to demand of philo¬
sophy that it should let down a ladder on which he may ascend
to this point of view; nay that it should show him that he already
has this ladder in his own possession.’* Hegel’s aim is to show
the reality as well as the rationality of the whole, and not merely
the exclusive reality of pure undifferenced Being and the corre¬
sponding inferiority and illusoriness of particularity. Pure Being,
with Hegel, instead of being the highest, is the lowest of the
categories, and his polemic is continually directed against the
folly of attempting to interpret the universe simply by such an
inadequate category. He urges that we must interpret reality
as an articulated system in which every part shall have its own
proper and persistent place. Being must open out into Becom¬
ing, and the processes of nature must be given their place in the
whole and regarded as calling for ever more and more adequate
interpretations, until all the particulars are found to be unified
under a supreme principle to which we find ourselves most akin
in the highest development of human personality, and so break
down the differences between the knower and the known and
attain the completed ideal of knowledge.

Yet though the Vedanta exhibits a much greater bias in
favour of unity as opposed to difference, and Hegel arrives at
a much fuller reconciliation of unity and difference than does
Sankara, yet Hegel is not altogether free from bias in the same
direction. Although he formally repudiates the idea of degrada¬
tion, yet we cannot help feeling that his almost purely intel-
lectualistic attitude leads him into positions not far removed
from those of the Vedantists, and that he is apt by logical
exclusions to reach conclusions of an abstract character almost
irreconcilable with actual experience and destructive of a
serviceable attitude to the world in which we live.

One of Hegel’s fundamental ideas is that of development;

1 Cf. Caird’s Hegel, 56. * Caird, Spinoza, 58.

..

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT >5
and, in considering this, the difficulty at once arises ^a^to
whether all stages of the process are equally real. Hegehwas
confronted with an awkward alternative, and whichever alterna- ,•
tive he chose, he, with his intellectualistic presupposition, was
in danger of depreciating the value of the individual. He found
himself compelled to regard the individual either as an insignifi¬
cant part of a naturalistic cosmic process, or as losing reality
altogether over against the sole reality of the Absolute in its
final expression.

On the one hand, in his reliance upon the centrality of
thought alone, he found that this thought was apt to dissolve
into negligible thinness in face of the developing actual, and
leave us with nothing above the process itself. As Prof. Pringle-
Pattison puts it: The metaphysical priority assigned to the
logical system pales before the imperious reality of the senses. 51
The Absolute is being developed in the process, and therefore
there is at any moment nothing higher than the stage already
reached. To quote again from Prof. Pringle-Pattison: The
circle is closed, finality is attained; the ideal is real and we see
that it is so. 5 3 We seem committed almost to a deification of the
actual, and to the acceptance of a system of naturalism and
determinism. From this point of view a recent writer is not far
wrong in describing Hegel 5 s ethics as a remorseless naturalism .3

As is the case in connexion with the doctrine of karma , to
which the Vedanta in its less strictly philosophical moods gives
its assent, we human beings are in the grasp of a pitiless process,
and no freedom is left for us. Hegel may view the developing
process more scientifically, but with him also the exclusion of
freedom seems to be equally rigorous. Moreover, it is impos¬
sible to designate evil as evil, if every part of the developing pro¬
cess is equally real, and there are no marks of progress in the
world. In such circumstances reforming zeal is out of place, and
our only truly sensible procedure is to legalize custom and
justify all existing institutions as well as the actual achievements
of individual men. But surely for ethical health it is necessary,
as one writer puts it, to Abstract from the concrete and actual
humanity of our experience, from the real men and women

' Hegelianism, and Personality, 201.

* Op. cit. 208.

3 Macintosh, Hegel , 211.

206 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

whom we know, and know to be imperfect, to have failings as
well as virtues and excellences of character, whom we love even
in their weakness and perhaps even because of it, but whom we
cannot worship or regard as the complete embodiment of the
moral ideal’. 1 We cannot allow the ideal to lose itself in becom¬
ing identified with the actual, instead of being regarded as identi¬
fiable with the real, i.e. as the further truth of the actual which
has not yet been attained.

The other alternative with which Hegel is faced almost com¬
pels him to deny the reality of all stages in the process of
development except the last. Here we find a close parallel
between Hegel and the Vedanta, and an approach on the part
of the former towards a doctrine of illusionism. Of course,
there is a difference between the Vedantic view of the illusori¬
ness of all the variety of the world, and the particular form which
this attitude assumes in connexion with the Hegelian doctrine
of development. But some kind of depreciation of detailed
experience seems inseparable from the intellectual point of
view, qvtn when applied definitely and seriously to cosmic
process; and the reason of this probably is that, when dominated
by intellectualism, we are inclined to identify the motive of
practical progress with the ideal of the attainment of truth.
When, however, we are concerned mainly with the movement
onwards from error to truth, we are apt to regard the stages of
error as ipso facto swept out of existence as soon as truth has
been attained.* We are compelled to regard every stage except
the last as an inadequate and therefore unreal thought-con¬
struction. From a purely logical point of view, an unsatisfactory
hypothesis fades away into unreality as soon as truth has been
discovered; and when the logical conception controls us, we are
apt to take up the same attitude towards the practical activities
of our lives. We come, e.g., to regard inventions which have
been improved upon and institutions of which the limitations
have become obvious, as unreal in the same sense as a discarded
hypothesis. But surely an engine which has been found to be
out of date does not cease to be real in the same sense as an
erroneous hypothesis; and, in general, the practical determina-

1 Seth, Ethical Principles, 409.

3 Of. the present writer’s Pantheism and the Value of Life, 563 ff.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 207

tions of our life-activity have a more abiding reality than the
errors through which we pass on the way to the attainment of
truth. In other words, it is not possible to apply a non-temporal
and merely logical judgement to the contents of the temporal
process without depriving these of reality and significance to
an altogether illegitimate extent. It is not permissible to occupy
in thought the highest point of view and then sweep back from
that to the temporal with a depreciatory condemnation of the
reality of our ordinary experience.

And yet this is what Hegel often seems to do. He too fre¬
quently regards the various phases of the finite world and of
human activity therein as merely a series of illusions. He is
dominated by .‘the fearful power of the negative’, which always
seems to treat reality as a negation of that which is actual at any
stage in the process. Even the motive of our most serious
struggles and highest aspirations is at times represented by him
as a kind of illusion. ‘The consummation of the infinite End,’
he says, ‘therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion
which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The Good, the
absolutely good, is eternally accomplishing itself in the world,
and the result is that it needs not wait upon us, but is already
by implication, as well as in full actuality, accomplished. This
is the illusion under which we live} It alone supplies at the same
time the actualizing force on which the interest of the world
depends. In the course of its process, the Idea creates that
illusion by setting an antithesis to confront itself, and its action
consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created. *■
The effect of such an attitude upon ethical and social
endeavour can hardly be doubtful. It may indeed create in us
a superficial optimism in that it enables us to be secure in the
confidence that all is already accomplished and persuades us
that we need not worry overmuch about the defects of temporal
existence. We may be permitted by it to take up an attitude of
practical indifference towards external happenings however dis¬
concerting these may be. We may deal with evil in a quick and
superficially satisfactory manner by denying the total sphere in
which it appears. We may get rid of uncomfortable details by
bringing them under the category of the contingent, and thus
i Italics mine. * Encyclopaedia, Sectionals.

208 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

virtually refusing to recognize their reality. In fact all the diffi¬
culties of the actual may be got rid of by classifying them as untrue
existences which, therefore, do not merit serious attention.

Now this may be satisfactory so long as the philosophic mood
persists, but when it weakens and the claims of the actual become
insistent again, our placidity is apt to be disturbed, and we find
ourselves without a refuge from the sorrow and sin of the world.
And, when we are confronted with actual emergencies, our indiffe¬
rence will not longer be taken as a sign of philosophical elevation,
but rather as a proof of ethical deficiency—an evidence of pitiless¬
ness in regard to the urgent needs of humanity. Once more, as
we have had occasion to notice in connexion with the Vedanta,
intellectualism is found to be insufficient for individual ethics or
for the uplift of society; and we are inclined to agree to a certain
extent with the verdict of the writer who exclaims with reference
to Hegel somewhat bitterly, ‘To the strength of his logic—his
mere logic—tears and blood and sins are negligible quantities.’ 1

But the point of comparison between Hegel and the VedantJ
which is most important as regards ethics, and as we shall see
also as regards religion, is the identity relation between man
and God which is established in both systems. Sankara reaches
identity with God by the way of abstraction, and Hegel by
emphasis on a self-consciousness which turns out to be more
divine than human, but in either case it is an identity which
practically destroys the reality and freedom of the individual.
Hegel, as we have seen, assigns much more importance to the
diversity of the world than does Sankara, but it is not sufficient
for true individualizing significance. For Hegel, individuality
is after all of little value. The importance of the thinker is apt
to be swallowed up in that of the thought, and ‘our minds are
no better than shifting heaps of percepts, principles and syllo¬
gisms’. 3 Therefore it matters little what becomes of us so long as
our thought persists; and the suggestion is not far away that
even the desire to continue otherwise than in the immortality
of our thought is a sign that we have reached only a compara¬
tively low philosophical level. To such an attitude Hegel was
led by the course which his reasoning has taken. As has been
so clearly pointed out by Prof. Pringle-Pattison, the system
1 Macintosh, op. cit. 14. 2 lb. 180.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 209

starts the Kantian synthetic unity of apperception, with
the idea of consciousness as such, set over against the manifold
of perception. The next step is to turn this unity into a meta¬
physical principle by universalizing it and identifying it with
the divine self-consciousness. As Prof. Haldane puts it, there
is in Hegel’s system ‘potential identity of man and God in a
single subject of knowledge’. 1 This means that all that is left
on the human side is the manifold and shifting content of per¬
ception ; and from such a position the transition is easy to
regarding the human consciousness with all its variety of experi¬
ence as a mere thought of the divine thinker. Or we may put
it more generally and say that the universe tends, in Prof.
Pringle-Pattison s phrase, to shrink together into a logical pro¬
cess of which individuals are merely the foci’/* The individual
is sacrificed to the universal, and, instead of hoping for personal
immortality, has to be content with his persistence as a thought
in the mind of God: he becomes, according to Lotze, a mere
selfless state of the creator’. And as on this line of thought
coalescence with the object known is regarded as the ideal of
knowledge, so this idea of coalescence is applied to existences
also. Identity expressed in association with the thought
of absorption, however unsatisfying religiously this may be,
comes to be conceived as the highest relationship between
the soul and God; and the conclusions of Hegel in this
respect may very well be placed alongside those of the Vedanta.
In both systems it has been shown that, so long as we occupy
a purely intellectual point of view, so long is it impossible to
provide adequately for human personality or to find a fully
satisfactory basis for the religious relationship. All that Hegel
can say in reference to this is that ‘religion is the Divine Spirit’s
knowledge of itself through the mediation of finite spirit. . .
Religion is not a transaction of man, but is essentially the
highest determination of the absolute idea itself. ’3

We may trace the same tendency to sacrifice the individual
in much of the later thought which is based upon Hegel—the
thought which according to Mr. Bertrand Russell follows the

1 Pathway to Reality, II. 169. 1 Hegelianism and Personality, 118.

3 Philosophy of Religion, I. 206.

P ,

2io COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

‘classical tradition' and shows an inclination to make thought
constitutive of reality instead of limiting it to the function of
deciding between alternative possible interpretations of reality . 1
The result of the intellectualistic procedure in more recent
philosophy also is that the thinker is of less importance than his
thought, and the thought of the individual becomes a thought
of the Absolute and the Universal. For Bosanquet the Absolute
is the only true individual, and all so-called finite individuals
are merely incomplete phases of the whole. He indeed indicates
his approval of the idea that the main purpose of the universe
is the ‘making of souls', and he quite fully appreciates the
doctrine that souls differ, not merely as separate numerical
entities, but because of their diversity of content. In this he
seems to take a step towards a recognition of the concrete indi¬
vidual, but on the other hand he neutralizes any tendency in
this direction by the emphasis which he lays upon the contents
of the individual consciousness. He regards the contents as of
far more importance than the container, and he draws un¬
warrantable conclusions from the consideration that in all the
great experiences of life, in all our sharing of institutional and
custom-born social organization, in all our aspirations after
a more ideal state of our own selves or of society, we inevitably
transcend the individual. With the purest and most elevated
souls, this constantly happens, and according to him it is what
ought to happen in all cases. As if any assertion of finite indi¬
viduality necessarily implied a selfish spirit, he speaks rather
contemptuously of those who ‘try to divide up the unity and
tell how much comes from “you” and how much from“God” T
The contents of our personality ought to merge in the universal;
our progress consists in an ever-nearer approach to this goal,
and it should be a matter of regret and of conscious failure if
we do not merge altogether.

Our destiny, our being’s heart and home

Is with infinitude, and only there.

Our aim is to be an ‘element' in the Absolute; we should not
claim even to be a ‘member’, lest the latter term should suggest
too definitely a continuing individuality.

1 Cf. Preface to Bertrand Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World .

2 Ci. What Religion Is^ 20.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 21 x

Bradley also, while occasionally accommodating himself to the
demands of ordinary experience, and admitting the criterion
that ‘a result, if it fails to satisfy our whole nature, comes short
of perfection 5 , and that 'if metaphysics is to stand, it must take
account of all sides of our being 5 , 1 yet shows, on the whole, a
definite inclination to sacrifice the individual. |‘Incompleteness,
unrest and unsatisfied reality, are the lot of the finite. There is
nothing which, to speak properly, is individual or perfect, except
only the Absolute. 52 ‘The plurality of souls in the Absolute is,
therefore, appearance and their existence is not genuine. 53 ;And
again, the same attitude is taken up as regards the goal of
endeavour, ‘The finite disappears in being accomplished. 5 4

He makes great use of the idea that the attainments of the
individual are merely adjectival in relation to the Absolute, and
thus seems almost content with the implication that the indi¬
vidual is nothing but a bundle of qualities. These are tempo¬
rarily conjoined in him, but do not belong to him, as it were, in
his own right. They are merely held in trust for the Absolute,
and, when the trust is fulfilled, the individual will surrender the
qualities altogether for attachment to the Absolute. This will
be his contribution, and in making this contribution the indi¬
vidual will fulfil his destiny. In such a position, however, there
seems to lurk a contradiction. If the contribution is merely of
qualities, these qualities, merely as such, might be supposed to
be already possessed by the Absolute and therefore cannot be
contributed. The idea of contribution has meaning, only if the
individual can give also himself, in. whom the qualities can have
that independence which alone can constitute them a gift in any
proper sense of the term; for one cannot give as a gift* that which
is already possessed by him to whom it is given. This difficulty,
however, does not deter Bradley from reaching the conclusion
that the true destiny of souls is absorption or transmutation
into the Absolute.

It is easy to see how such an attitude will empty the region of
moral endeavour of much of its meaning. If there is no distinc¬
tion between us and the Absolute, and if, in respect of the
Absolute, Bradley can say,.‘Nothing perfect, nothing genuinely
real, can move; the Absolute has no seasons, but all at once

1 Appearance and Reality, 148. * lb, 246. 3 lb. 305. 4 lb. 419*

2 i 2 COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE VEDANTA

bears its leaves, fruits and blossoms 5 ^ then the heart is taken out
of the ethical struggle. In an earlier passage Bradley animad¬
verts upon the divorce between religion and morality with a view
to showing that neither morality nor religion can be ultimate.
He tells us that ‘if, flying from the discord, religion keeps its
thoughts fixed upon harmony it tends to suffer once more. . . .
The truth that devotion even to a finite object may lift us above
moral laws, seduces religion into false and immoral perversions.
Because for it all reality is, in one sense, good alike, every action
may become completely indifferent. It idly dreams its life away
in the quiet world of divine inanity, or, forced into action by
chance desire, it may hallow every practice, however corrupt,
by its empty spirit of devotion.’* The curious thing is that
Bradley does not seem to see that the same consequences as are
indicated in the last sentence may follow from his own posi¬
tion. If we are at best engrossing ourselves with a play of
appearances, our final view of consummation will leave us
without energy for the arduous stages of the process towards
that consummation. As in the Vedanta, so with Bradley, the
ethical level is found to be transcended, and goodness must be
regarded as ‘a subordinate, and, therefore, a self-contradictory
aspect of the universe’. 3 If everything is already accomplished,
or if nothing that is accomplished has any prospect of con¬
tinuance, the life of the individual and of humanity is emptied
of meaning, and, as we shall see, little place is left for any truly
religious relationship. Very naturally did the almost pitiless
intellectualism of Bosanquet and Bradley lead to a reaction in
the direction of pluralism. But it does not seem necessary to
pass in such extreme fashion from absorbing unity to inorganic
particularity, and our concluding chapter will be occupied with
an attempt to show that, while there are dangers associated
with the ideal offered to us by the Vedanta system and philo¬
sophies broadly similar to it, it is possible also to conserve the
religious value enshrined in the ideal and, perhaps, by certain
modifications to enhance it.

Hitherto we have been trying to trace the main tendencies of
the Vedanta as these are reflected in its attitude to authority
and within the scope of the doctrines of the two orders of

1 Appearance and Reality, 500. 3 Op* cit. 444. 3 lb. 420.

AND MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 213

knowledge, the notion of God both unqualified and qualified,
the validity of external experience, and the place of the indi¬
vidual both in this life and that which is to come. We have
found that the inclination of speculation has been strongly in
a monistic direction and that it has been associated with a pre¬
dominantly intellectualistic point of view. We have seen that
the same tendency is strongly marked in the philosophies of
Spinoza, Hegel, Bradley, and Bosanquet, See., and that the most
striking resultant might be described as, in general, a merging of
the part in the whole, a sacrifice of the Many to the One, and
oftheindividualtotheUniversal. Ourstudyof parallels between
the Vedanta and other allied modes of thought has compelled us
to recognize the principle of identity as their fundamental concep¬
tion. We are thus brought round once more to the point at which
we left our main argument at the close of last chapter. There we
found that the Vedantic basis for ethics which this principle
affords, was decidedly insecure, and we have reached practically
the same conclusion as regards the Hegelian school of thought.

The underlying idea that the relationship between us and God
is one of identity may indeed diminish the distance which seems
to separate us from God and may deliver us from that coldness
in our subjective attitude which a more external relationship
might induce. Yet we have also become aware of undesirable
consequence of various sorts. The finite has been absorbed in
the Infinite, and a sufficient basis has not been left on which
our individual personality may become effective. Intellectual-
ism may save us from the bondage of the sense world and
or dinar y desires, but it also presents a strong similarity to
naturalism, in that, equally with the latter, it leaves us under
the sway of determinism. It provides no sphere for the free
creative activity of the spirit, and, if our experience is one with
the experience of God, we come under the control of laws of
thought which are not so much principles of our own action as
superior determinations of that action, inasmuch as they are
laws of the universal. The importance of the generalized point
of view turns our attention away from the particular and thus
tends to rob us of the vitalizing effect of action in reference to
the particular. The result is a dream-like attitude to life, along
with that sense of futility which attaches to dreams and the

214 THE VEDANTA AND MODERN THOUGHT

consequent evaporation of ideals. The ethical life is thus robbed
of the necessary energy for dealing with it, and because this life
belongs essentially to the sphere of duality, we are required
altogether to pass beyond it in reaching the goal of identity.
The distinction between good and evil ceases to be the most
urgent of contrasts, and presents itself not so much as a stimulus
to effort as an opportunity for acquiescence. Tor, if we are one
with God, and if in our search for universal Concepts we have
risen above the movement of time and yet in our practical life
have still got to live under the conditions of time, we are apt to
satisfy our desire for eternity or timelessness by arresting defini¬
tively the movement of time and crystallizing the momentary
into the permanent. ^ But when experience is thus theoretically
conceptualized and practically made static, the ideas of further
possibilities and progress are apt to disappear from it. We find
ourselves confined to the charmed circle of the actual, occupied
with perpetual analysis and re-analysis of given conditions and
relations, and powerless to move forward to projects of reforma¬
tion. And from out the far distance there comes to us a vision
which further robs our ideals of their effectiveness, for if we are
one with God we are also complete in Him. Despite the warnings
against ethical sluggishness which the moral intensity of certain
writers on Vedantism compels them to emphasize, we yet can¬
not altogether escape from the conception that perfection on such
presuppositions is not something to be attained in the long run,
but something which we already possess. Almost inevitably the
question arises in our minds as to why, if we have annihilated the
temporal distance between ourselves and the goal’vve should any
longer submit to the exhausting conditions of the race.

But enough was said in our last chapter in reference to this
point, and we are now left with the final question whether the
same insecurity which we have discovered in respect of ethics
will attach also to the only religious relationship for which the
identity conception seems to leave room. We may focus our
thoughts on the value of the identity principle by asking whether
the relationship which emerges from it is sufficient for the
purposes of religion, for, after all, the degree of religious satis¬
factoriness ought to furnish a supreme criterion of any system.
This problem will occupy us in our concluding chapter.

THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA, AND
SOME CONCLUSIONS

JT is probable that the applicability of such a criterion as we
il- have just proposed, viz. the test of religious satisfactoriness,
will be at once disputed,either on the ground that any test at all
is superfluous or that this particular test is illegitimate and mis¬
leading. Those who assign the first reason for objection argue
that the identity relationship is inevitable, and that therefore it
is useless to discuss whether it is adequate or not. Such a rela¬
tion is said to be the ultimate position to which we must come
when we fully analyse the conditions of knowledge, and is a
necessary deduction from the fundamental assumption of ideal¬
ism. If an object is known only through thought, then the
object itself is thought, and, when we are constrained to deal
with thought alone, the identification of subject and object, and
on broader lines, of the finite and the infinite, is the only form
which our ideal of completed knowledge can take. The relation
of subject and object, it is said, is that with which we start,
and development will consist in overcoming the ‘otherness’, by
means of the expansion or deeper knowledge of the subject. The
western mind, which is inclined to idealism, will probably think
more of expansion and the eastern of deepening, but the result in
both cases is the same, and the ideal ought to be the same, viz.
the identification of the subject and the object, and the entire
removal of duality. As an Indian writer says: ‘One of the
universally admitted maxims of Hindu philosophy is that the
mind assumes the form of what it perceives, and, therefore,
necessarily becomes what it perceives. 1 To know a thing is to
become that thing, and, universally, to think properly of, or to
know, the Infinite is to become the Infinite. Our aspiration in
knowledge and in every spiritual activity is to

Close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul.

True knowledge places us on a level with God, or, rather, makes
us one with God. It is an ideal of knowledge which in western

R. C* Bose, Hindu Philosophy, 169,

zi 6 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

philosophy has come down from Aristotle, who holds that the
only activity which can appropriately be ascribed to the Divine
Being is the activity of the thinking mind, and that the charac¬
teristic of such thought is that ‘it becomes its object in the act
of comprehending it’. For Spinoza the knowledge wherewith
we know God is also the knowledge wherewith God knows
himself, and the fundamental principle of Hegel is that in the
highest thought we reach potential identity with God. We come
across the same principle in the Mundaka Upanishad III. 2. 9,
‘He who knows Brahman, becomes Brahman’, and that such
an ideal underlies the Vedantic conception of tat tvam asi is so
obvious as to need no further comment.

It is therefore asked why, in view of all this, we should take
the trouble to apply the criterion of religious satisfaction which
we have suggested. If we are faithfully to analyse the condi¬
tions of knowledge in their highest exercise, it is urged that no
other relationship is possible except the relationship of identity,
and that if this is not religiously satisfying, so much the worse
for us. We have got to accept the inevitability of the facts of
the case.

In answer to this contention we may say simply that the
epistemological assumption does not seem to us to be valid. We
shall return to this point a few pages later, but in the meantime
we may consider the position of those who object to the test of
religious sufficiency on the ground that such a test is illegitimate
and misleading. The reason which they give is that, even if we
admit that a test may be applied, it is philosophy which must
su pply the test and not religion. Religion is definitely on a
lower level than philosophy; it is a stage through which the
philosopher must pass, and failure to satisfy the needs of the
lower is to be welcomed rather than deplored, inasmuch as
unsatisfied need is a spur to the requisite progress from the
lower to the higher.

There are many instances in Vedantic teaching, and in Indian
thought generally, of this depreciation of religion in favour of
philosophy. Prof. Radhakrishnan thinks that if we try to remain
at the religious level we shall be involved in an inextricable
dilemma. Personality is essential to the religious relationship
of worship, but yet personality is a limitation of the perfection

SOME CONCLUSIONS 217

of the Absolute. Thus we are compelled to say that 'if God is
perfect, religion is impossible. If God is imperfect, religion is
ineffective’, the reason of the ineffectiveness being that 'we
cannot have with a finite limited God the joy and peace, the
assurance of victory and the confidence in the ultimate destiny
of the universe’. 1 Prof. Radhakrishnan’s regret is noteworthy,
as it implies an ideal of an effective religion which would seem
to be indispensable for a completed attitude to the universe, but
yet on the whole he extricates himself from the dilemma by
holding that religion must be transcended. 'The end of religion’,
he says, 'is the transcendence of religion,’ and again, 'Religious
worship has to be accepted until the perfect condition is
reached.’ 2 The main theme of an earlier work of his is to show
that philosophical 'deviations from the “high road” of absolut¬
ism are all due to the “reign of religion in philosophy” ’. 3 It
is true that later in the same book he says that'true religion and
true philosophy will agree’, 4 but his vote would be in favour of
a religion turned philosophy rather than in favour of a philo¬
sophy turned religion, and the reason of this would seem to be
that a proper regard for the identity relation and for the con¬
sideration that, in order to know God, we must be God, does
not admit of what is usually regarded as the religious attitude.
Kirtikar is still more uncompromising as to the desirability of
the dominance of philosophy over religion. Although he also
leaves room for the ultimate identification of religion and philo¬
sophy, he is emphatic in his disregard of the ordinary religious
consciousness. 'Ethics, morality and religious life’, he says,
‘admittedly belong to the sphere of relativity—to the world of
the One and the Many,’ though they may be ‘as much necessary
to the development and spiritual progress of man as the initial
stages in the development of a child are to his attaining man¬
hood’. And he asks rather indignantly, Ms philosophic truth
to be sacrificed lest its recognition might . „ . shake the very
foundations of religion?’ 5

" 1 Radhakrishnan, I. 97.

* lb. 235; italics mine. There seems to be a modification of this view in
his book on The Hindu View of Life, which has just appeared, and in which
he apparently suggests that religion has to do with a reality beyond all
differences and is therefore ultimate.

3 Cf. The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy , Chapter VII.

4 lb. 22. 5 Kirtikar, 106 and 107.

218 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

It is obvious that, according to views of this kind, religion is
given a place at all only on condition that it should be philo¬
sophically transformed, and should thus cease to be what we
ordinarily regard as religious. The result will be of an exceed¬
ingly refined character, and of such a religion only a few chosen
souls of a philosophical cast of mind will be capable, whilst the
bulk of humanity by the very nature of the case will be excluded.
Now it is noteworthy that this depreciation of the demands of
religion takes place in connexion with adherence to the monistic
Vedantic ideal of identity. We thus have an implicit admission
that the conception does not satisfy ordinary religious require-
ments; and, even though the additional suggestion be made that
it does not matter very much whether the test succeeds or not,
the admission of failure remains significant.

But we may ask, Is it so immaterial that religious demands
should remain unsatisfied by a conception taken to be meta¬
physically fundamental ? Despite the slightness of emphasis on
this consideration which would seem to be indicated by the
quotations just made, it would be a mistake to suppose that the
Vedantists themselves are, in general, regardless of what they
consider to be religious needs. We have seen how it was possible
to say that no people on earth took religion so seriously as did
the people of India. 1 The whole attitude of the Vedanta might
be described as an attempt to do the work of religion, even
though it be by means of a philosophy. Sankara has been
described as ‘a great philosopher who fully grasped the necessity
of religion to the world’,* and this by a writer who contends
that the Vedanta was intended to be only a philosophy and
not a religion. We have noticed both in Prof. Radhakrishnan
and in Kirtikar a strong desire to identify religion and philo-
sophy, which shows that, provided religion is kept in a proper
relation to philosophy, they by no means wish that the religious
test should be altogether abandoned. The former encourages
himself with the consideration that ‘the monistic conception is

1 Cf. Deussen, S . V. 49; cf. also Heiler, Sunder Singh , p. an: 'India has
been for centuries the land of religion. As hardly amongst any other people
of the earth there is amongst the people of India a wonderfully strong sense
of.the transcendental world and an earnest desire to sacrifice everything to
this supersensible world.’

: Worsley, Concepts of Monism, 90.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 2x9

also capable of developing the highest religious spirit’; 1 and the
latter admits the principle that ‘the richness of an abstract con¬
ception depends upon its efficacy in awakening the religious
consciousness in man’. 2 They would seem to be in almost com¬
plete agreement with the dictum of Hegel that philosophy only
unfolds itself when it unfolds religion and in unfolding itself,
it unfolds religion’.

Why then are they in such difficulties ? Why have they either
to depreciate religion as a test, or, if they admit it, why have
they to distinguish so carefully between religion in general and
philosophical religion, even while it has to be admitted almost
despairingly that such a philosophical religion cannot be ‘for
the bulk of humanity but only for the chosen few’? 3 Is it not
because there is something essentially antagonistic between the
identity principle which they cherish and the religious con¬
sciousness in general? They seem to be faced with the alterna¬
tive either of giving up the religious attitude, except in a very
attenuated and almost purely philosophical form, or of giving
up the principle. The reluctance of these very philosophers
themselves to accept the first alternative encourages us to refuse
the admission that the religious test is either illegitimate or
misleading. We do not consider that the objections to the test
are sufficiently convincing to lead to its abandonment. Religious
value must be considered and not merely philosophical or
religio-philosophical value. We are therefore back again at our
central problem, as to whether the principle of identity offers
such satisfaction to the human spirit in its highest development
as to make it worthy of retention.

Now it would be unfair to deny in any uncompromising way
the religious value of the identity concept. It is indeed, as we
have seen, reached through negation, both theoretical and
practical, and through abstraction. But negation is, after all,
the expression of a consciousness which is at the bottom of all
religion, a refusal to indulge in a superficial optimism, and a
recognition of the truth that ‘strait is the gate, and narrow is the
way, which leadeth unto life 5 . And, on the other hand and more
positively, identity is often regarded as the speculative basis of

1 Radhakrishnan, I. 98. / * Kirtikar, 24.

3 Worsley, op. cit. 16S.

220 . RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

that mystical consciousness which must be an element in every
true form of religion.

It is undoubtedly true that religion emerges from a mood of
‘divine discontent’ and is the indication of an insatiable quest.
Whenever the religious consciousness becomes vividly and
intensely awake, the soul is always inclined to say, ‘It is not
here, it is not here—that which I seek’; and, in contrast to the
urgency of the aspiration and the importance of its objective,
the world of the actual is apt to assume a dream-like and illusive
character. The Vedanta in its negations expresses very nearly
the mood described by Wordsworth, when

The gross and visible frame of things
Relinquishes its hold upon the sense,

Yea almost on the mind itself, and seems
All unsubstantialized.

The intensity of religious devotion expresses itself in a single-
ness of aim which is intolerant of the variety of ordinary experi¬
ence, and conscious only of the inadequacy of that experience
to reveal the ultimate Unity towards which the quest is so
earnestly directed. If in such a mood the multiplicity of
ordinary experience engenders a sense of confusion, perplexity,
and mystery, it is perhaps natural that a solution of the problems
should be sought, not in further examination of the ordinary,
but in turning away from it, and assigning the mystery—now:
become a source of attraction—to a detached Ultimate Being,
in contact with whom, and in intuitive apprehension of whose
nature, we may find that peace which the world cannot give—•
as we reach

that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened. 1

Perhaps occasionally it is true that the mood we have sought to
suggest indicates that less worthy mental condition of lassitude
or weariness of spirit which has moved a writer in Das Licht
vom Osten to exclaim, ‘How tired must the Indian spirit have
been of all Being, that no other deliverance was discovered by
* Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey .

SOME CONCLUSIONS 221

him.’ 1 It is necessary, as we shall see, that we should obtain
some means of distinguishing between lower and higher mystical
moods, but on the whole we should prefer to derive the prevail¬
ing mood not from lassitude but from a sense of the unreality
of time, from a consciousness that we are passing beyond both
spatial and temporal limitations, and that the permanence or
eternity which we long for in religion is not some abode of bliss
which we reach after the struggle of untold years, but something
in which we may participate even here and now, just in so far as
we realize the insignificance of the spatial and the temporal, and
feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness. 2

That it is not tubtc lassitude is shown by its association with
the more volitional idea of self-denial. The Upanishads describe
him who knows as him 4 who has no desires’, and it is felt in¬
tensely that the way to religious attainment lies through sacrifice
and the emptying of self. We must ‘noughten all else that
would keep us from God, in the spirit which T. E. Brown
suggests in the following lines.

But thou art all replete with very ‘thou’

And hast such shrewd activity

That when He comes, He says, ‘This is enow

Unto itself, ’tis better let it be:

It is so small and full,

There is no room for Me. 5

But the identity concept has value, not only in respect of the
negations through which it is reached, but in regard also to the
consummation which it indicates. It expresses undoubtedly an
abhorrence of externality in religion. In these days we are
somewhat weary of the idea of a God set at a distance from the
world and from ourselves. Adeistic God is alien to our thoughts,
and we demand that God should be conceived as in the world
and especially as in us. It is felt that religion must be subjective
or it is nothing at all. It must be ours , our own attitude. If
God is to mean anything for us, He must be brought from out¬
side of us to the very inside, as it were, of our heart. And here
the Vedantic formula, tat tvam asi y with its emphasis upon
community of nature between the human and the divine, would

* Op. tit. 92. - Wordsworth, Expostulation and Reply.

222 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

seem to promise satisfaction for our aspirations. It strengthens
both our refusal to allow any longer that we are separate, self-
centred, independent beings, and our claim that divinity is
within us or that we are within the divine. God is all in all, and
we are absorbed in the All—there is no longer any difference to
disturb our religious contentment. 'From death to death goes
he who sees plurality anywhere, 5 and we are encouraged to add
that from life to life goes he who has abolished plurality and
overthrown this mosaic wall of separation. It has been said
that 'in middle life God becomes far less an object than an
atmosphere 5 ; but such an experience surely may belong to all
stages in the development of the soul.

Thus we may freely admit the beauty and attractiveness of
this religious conception of identity. It seems to represent the
consummation of our religious yearning; and, even though we
may be constrained to point out that it tends to embody the
emotional resultant of normal religious relationship rather than
to describe the religious relation itself, and that it throws into
permanent metaphysical form what is a momentary, though
oft-repeated, subjective and emotional experience, yet it cannot
be denied that, for some minds, the identity relation with its
mystical possibilities supports the intensest form of religion.
And it may be said again that it is not by any means only the
result of spiritual lassitude or even of exhaustion, but represents
rather a positive and active spiritual awareness, 'the rest of
infinite unrest 5 , as it has been called, an experience which is
real, however wrongly conceived it may be through the influence
of the particular thought-form under which it is subsumed.
Even if it were on the whole more passive than we are willing to
admit, it still, as Prof. Paterson says, 'remains a possibility that
the God who giveth his beloved in sleep, could make some gifts
in the Yoga-trance to those who sought Him therein with a pure
and sincere heart 5 . 1 Perhaps also as Max Muller puts it, 'if it
is true that “those also serve who only stand and wait 55 , then we
may hope that even the quiet in the land are not so entirely
useless as they appear to be 5 . 2 And surely even the most actively
inclined religionist would hardly venture to evacuate of all
meaning the classic description, so Vedantic in spirit, which
1 The Nature of Religion, 187. a Muller, S. S. 193.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 223

Plotinus gives of mystical attainment: ‘It is a state in which you
are your finite self no longer—in which the Divine essence is
communicated to you. It is the liberation of your mind from
its finite anxieties. Like only can comprehend like. When you
cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the
reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its Divine essence,
you realize this Union, nay, this Identity.’ 1

Yet we still wonder whether this identity relation, despite all
its beauty and spiritual satisfyingness, adequately represents the
true conditions of spiritual communion and attainment. Some¬
thing fuller seems to be demanded. We cannot be altogether
content, e.g., with such a phrase as ‘the reduction of your soul
to its simplest self’. In such a phrase—which is typical—there
seems to lurk a certain suggestion of abnormality, of negation
beyond what is essentially necessary, and of too purely intel¬
lectual abstraction. We may ask whether in realizing and taking
precautions against these dangers we may not reach a more
adequate and more religiously valuable statement of the relation
between ourselves and God.

We have seen that the negation through which the identity is
reached is to a certain extent commendable and necessary; but,
if it is pressed too far, the accompanying advantages seem to be
lost. Often it appears as if so much stress were laid upon the
negation and abstractness of the means that they have infected
with their emptiness the end which it* is sought to attain. We
have already referred frequently to this negative process as
applied to the external world, and we are now more immediately
concerned with it as it affects the relation between the self and
God. We discover a tendency to reduce both sides of the rela¬
tionship to their lowest terms, and thus to reach an identity of
zeros so far as determinate qualities go. As regards anything
more, we are left only with the affirmation of an indescribable
experience, the product of an intuition alleged to be above the
level of the intellect. It is by no means impossible to believe in
the truth of such an experience, but we fail to see the necessity
for such profound silence regarding its character, and it would
be more satisfactory if it could be established, not in separation
1 Quoted in Kirtikar, 170.

224 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

from or in opposition to ordinary experience, but in organic
connexion with it. Unless such an organic connexion can be
shown, we cannot conceive of the identity relation being able to
afford such a permanent basis as is necessary for religion.

Denial must never be merely for the sake of denial; it must
always have reference to a positive. It has its proper place only
when something supremely valuable is apprehended in compari¬
son with which everything else is of lesser value or negligible,
when there is discovered, as it has been put, c a reality so intense,
so encompassing, so absorbing that beside it all other existences
grow dim and at length fade into nothingness and illusion’. 1 But
when the mind, as in excessive mysticism or asceticism, falls in
love with denial for its own sake, and, faced with the difficulties
of the actual, attempts to meet these only by way of negation;
and, moreover, continues the same procedure with regard to the
soul itself, the result cannot be satisfactory. When thought,
devoted to abstract procedure, sets out upon its search for the
‘mythical Absolute’, for some unknowable substance hidden
behind the qualities of the world, or some mysterious soul lurk¬
ing beneath all the processes of the mind, and when, failing in
the quest, it is disposed to deny the reality of all the products of
its exploring experiences, it may reach the conception of identity
between that which has not been found in either direction of the
search. But a result which is so closely and consciously asso¬
ciated with scepticism is hardly likely to perform adequately the
function of removing scepticism, and yet this is surely one of the
functions we naturally assign to religion—we expect it to give
us at least some rock to which we may cling in the midst of our
sea of doubt. It is significant in connexion with this line of
thought that Sriharsa, a commentator of the Vedantic school
who flourished about the end of the twelfth century, after dwell¬
ing constantly upon the contradictory character of appearances
and the untrustworthiness of our faculties, reached a doctrine
of Real Being which could be distinguished only with difficulty
from a doctrine of the void.

Now all healthy philosophy must begin with a certain amount
of scepticism, and we must not try to minimize the difficulties of
gaining a knowledge of the soul. As Oscar Wilde says: ‘To

1 Hibbert Journal) art. 'Centripetal Realism 5 , Oct. 1926.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 225

recognize that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate
achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When
one has weighed the sun in the balance and mapped out the
seven heavens, star by star, there still remains oneself/ 1 And
Bradley teaches over and over again that the subject in the end
must be felt and it can never be perceived’. 2 The self is so deeply
ourselves that one can hardly sound its depths. All this is true,
but we exaggerate the difficulties if we persistently distrust our
faculties, if we make, as it were, a cult of scepticism and by way
of it hope to reach unity with real Being. Such procedure
savours of abnormality and will be followed by some kind of
retributory reaction. If we have found only vanity and illusion
in the world, we have accustomed ourselves to the darkness, and
one may come to expect that the self will be enveloped in the
same darkness, in which we shall have to be content with blurred
outlines and vague indeterminate forms of being. Or, to
change the metaphor, we may make 4 a desert of the soul and
call it peace’. 3

In this darkness or desert, this vagueness and indeterminate¬
ness, there lie great dangers for the soul filled with a haunting
sense of emptiness. It may be tempted to the repose of death
rather than of life. If such a result seems to follow from the
depreciation of our faculties, which again is the consequence of
disillusionment, then,as hinted above,the result may be desired,
not out of a grim determination to reach truth, but simply from
lassitude of spirit. As Prof. Paterson again says: ‘Repose may
be the index of very different types of character, and the by¬
product of very different activities. It may be akin either to the
peace of the saint or the sage, or to the placidity of the cow or
the slumber of the tired horse. The pursuit of rest may be every
whit as selfish as, and may entail even more injury to others
than, the pursuit of wealth, and may have its roots in sheer
indolence and cowardice.’ 4

Now in commenting upon the attractiveness of the identity
ideal we have already indicated, as emphatically as possible, that
it may correspond to the subjective ‘peace of the saint’, but the
danger is that the abstractness of the result will not rule out

1 De Profundis, a Appearance and Reality, 108.

3 Cf. Prof; Paterson, The Nature of Religion, 205. • 4 lb. 205.

' Q '

226 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

lower motives with sufficient strictness. If the result of the
operation of both higher and lower motives is a featureless
identity, we cannot from the result derive a criterion which will
enable us to decide which type of motive has been operative.
But this is unfortunate, and surely it is legitimate to demand
that the result should have such positive character as will show
it to be the outcome only of pure and elevated religious con¬
centration. We must be able to distinguish between the destinies
of the^aint and the sluggard, and yet, in reference to an ideal
which is largely described by negations, it is difficult to secure
such differentiation. Thought that is abstract is always poor,
and the poverty of our thought about the Absolute may make
it impossible for us to refute the cynical reflection that unity
with such an Absolute means that one lot happens to saint and
slothful sinner alike.

The course of our whole discussion has revealed a closely
allied danger, also showing the religious inadequacy of the
identity ideal. It encourages, not explicitly but implicitly, the
use of lower categories. As Jeroboam, king of Israel, ‘made of
the lowest of the people priests of the high places’, so do we make
use of the lowest of our thoughts when we enter the shrine of
the mysterious indescribable Reality of all things. The identity
conception may seem to express the highest spiritual attainment
of the soul, but the terms which it uses for expression are often
based merely on physical analogies. A similar defect of course
attaches to all use of language to express spiritual experiences,
but the influence of the physical analogy seems to cling to the
key-words of identity religion with more than average close¬
ness. ‘Absorption’, e.g., retains more of physical than of
psychical association, and suggests something like the ‘plop’ of
a raindrop in a pool of water. Bergson has drawn attention to
this tendency of the intellect in abstract procedure, and has
argued that the inadequacy of abstraction can be shown by the
fact that the results of abstraction can be expressed only through
spatial metaphors. What is psychical and vital cannot be
reached by abstraction; but yet, as we make the attempt and
think away one concrete determination after another, we come
inevitably to the idea of illimitable spaces, filled only with
emptiness, and are left with the feeling of our own loneliness

SOME CONCLUSIONS 227

and helplessness and insignificance—we count for as little as
a wave of the vast ocean or a speck of sand in the far-stretching
desert. Even as we struggle upwards in our thought, we find it
difficult to get away from the dominance of the physical. We
may think of filled space rather than empty space, but the result
is only the unsatisfactory conception of God and ourselves as
forming ‘one block’ so to speak. Even biological categories
yield only the idea of God as a vital principle, and ourselves as
physically participating in his life. The point is that, if we insist
on negation and depreciation of personality, we become prisoners
of the lower categories of our thought, and these react so as to
increase the depreciation and prevent fullness of relationship
between us and God. We come to think ultimately in terms of
material atoms and physical forces. Our relation to the universe
is interpreted almost entirely in a quantitative manner. Not
in our higher endowments of human character and personality
do we realize our closeness to the divine, but rather in those of
our faculties which are nearest to unconsciousness and our
physical nature. No room is left for the uniqueness or the
freedom of personality. We are swallowed up in God, and
when we inquire who we are, no answer comes from out the
silences of the boundless spaces.

We are thus left without guidance, and into the emptiness,
into the house of the intellect thus swept and garnished, undesir¬
able guests may enter. If our fundamental belief presents us
with no deterring positive characters, we are at the mercy of
arbitrary authority, superstition, and even of our own capri¬
cious invention. We have no criterion by which we may try the
spirits and see whether they be of God. From our distrust of
our faculties we draw also the conclusion that if nothing matters
in the sense that nothing is reliable, anything may matter and
be allowed to become dominant. Distrust of our faculties may
produce a permanent and disconcerting mood of scepticism in
which we despair of arriving at any universal standard. If a man
is told that the deepest reality is without character and reached
only through cohesion between the human and the divine in
a featureless blank, or if he is told that in any case a satisfactory
apprehension of it is impossible, then, seeing that he cannot
exist in a mental and spiritual vacuum, he is apt to embrace any

Q 2

228

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
theory or any object of devotion which lies to hand without
scrutinizing it too closely. When the intellectual activity
abandons its task through lack of content with which it may deal,
or for sceptical reasons, it is apt to give way before an anti-
intellectualistic reaction, and the house of the soul may be nlle
with phantoms and extravagant products of unrestrained con¬
struction. 1 . - . r™

The further steps may be left to the influence of custom. I he
mere habit of keeping a theory loosely in the mind tends to
engender a certain liking for it. He who entertains it becomes
loath to part with it, and the bigotry of superstition finds its
opportunity. The pendulum swings over very easily, if not
always in the same individual, at least in the same society, from
agnosticism to credulity; and the transit has frequently been
observed in the land where the philosophy of abstract identity
is most naturalized. Bradley speaks of finding vanity and illusion
in a world which is self-less and of then returning ‘to one’s self
into congenial darkness and the equivocal consolation of some
psychological monster’. 2 Sometimes, however, the consoling—
and also terrifying—monsters may not be merely psychological
hypostases, but exceedingly realistic projections of the imagina¬
tion which acquire a fictitious objectivity through the associa¬
tion of communal and traditional beliefs. Yet they do not
satisfy with any permanent satisfaction even those who cherish
them, for as has been said: ‘No religion can permanently take
refuge in the glamour of vagueness and fluidity of conception
and uncOrrelated elements.’ 3

Further, as we have had occasion to point out in connexion
with our discussion of the ethical effects of the Vedanta, the
identity conception may occasionally produce a mood approach¬
ing to subjective complacency or even conceit. Emphasis may
be laid upon ourselves rather than upon God; we may take upon
ourselves the burden of the universal consciousness, and seeing
that this latter has been left destitute of content, it affords no
defence against individual caprice. The individual may invest
himself with the authority of the universal, and, intellectually

1 Of. the present writer’s Pantheism and the Value of Life , 299 ff.

* Appearance and Reality , 120.

3 Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity , 263. *

SOME CONCLUSIONS 229

and religiously, may do that which is right in his own eyes. An
opportunity is thus afforded for that arbitrary perversion of the
prophetic consciousness whereby a man claims specific illumina¬
tion and absolute authority for his own views and practices, and,
in short, becomes a law unto himself in the realm of metaphysics
and religion, like the ‘stateless man’ of Aristotle’s political con¬
ception. What Clutton Brock says of the ascetic is also true in
a measure of such men. They ‘are the worst egoists of all, think¬
ing about nothing but their own souls, which means their own
selves, living a life of inner conquest and adventure, which is
all artificial . 1 Their interest, because they refuse it to external
reality, is the more intensely concentrated on themselves; their
very God to whom they incessantly pray, is but an idol made and
set up within the temple of the self, and has no likeness to the
real God, if there be one.’ 2 But surely, as another writer says:
‘The great individual is not the man who grows up in nearest
approach to isolation; whoever does this will remain the nearest
approach to a perfect idiot. The great individual is the man who
is reacting to the greatest number of elements in Reality, the
greatest variety of its aspects.’ 3

This brings us to the further consideration that identity which
relies mainly upon negation is open to the charge of abnor¬
mality. We must apply this criticism with the greatest care.
We must not take ourselves too seriously and regard ourselves
as the type of the normal. But by normal we may be allowed to
mean that which takes account of all aspects of experience,
allows the fact of existence at least to create a presumption in
favour of the continuance of that existence, and regards it as
a justifiable assumption that the faculties we possess are meant
to be used in an harmonious and systematic way, demanding that
no one of them should be elevated at the expense of the rest.
Normally we aim at the widest possible grasp of experience,
and, if a negative movement in our thought seems necessary,
we ask that it should be supplemented by a positive. As Prof.
B. K. Shastri says, the truly religious man ‘pleads for a simple
natural course of religion in every department of life, action,
thought and emotion. . . . The ideal, the rational ideal, will first

1 Italics mine. * Essay on Religion, 86.

3 Bishop Temple, Christ us Veritas , 55. . .

230 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
spiritualize, will first rationalize, the whole scheme of life the
so-called material and the non-material, and will, as a corollary
to the truth thus established, vitalize and vivify the whole . .
To work for human life, is to work for the whole world of

life. 51

Now we do not think that the religious relationship we have
been considering is able to satisfy this test. The element o
agnosticism which is associated with it seems to be in conflict
with the normal demands of the religious nature. It puts a man
out of touch with the universe, in which he lives, and denies
him an object whom he may invest with beauty and goodness,
and thus worship and serve. And denial of the world leads to
a denial of God or at least to the assertion of a merely character¬
less God, altogether unsatisfying. One abnormality leads to
another. As Dr. Tagore suggests: ‘Flight from the world is
flight from God. Flight from the world means an abrupt
separation of the creature from the Creator.’ 1 The abnormality
shows itself also in detachment of the individual from his society.
It encourages him in the thought that the main object of his
endeavour should be the salvation of his lonely soul. Within
the soul, also, there is an abnormal elevation of the intellect over
the other faculties, and this results in an abstract view of the
self which empties it of all reality. In practice it leads to a non¬
evangelical indifference to the religious needs of the common
people. When for religious purposes we rely entirely, or chiefly,
upon the intellect, it must necessarily follow that the majority
of men are excluded. A mediating view may of course be
adopted, viz. that what does not satisfy the intellectual man
may yet be good enough for the masses.- But such a view cannot
be permanently held without weakening the religion of the
multitude, or, for the sake of its preservation, inducing hypo¬
critical observance on the part of the intellectuals. It is curious
how frequently a predominantly intellectual attitude has had
associated with it a claim to a monopoly of divine truth and a
jealous guarding of it from the intrusions of the vulgar. But
such religious dualism is unfortunate whatever form it takes.
Religious indifference which is born of intellectual superiority,

i B. K. Shastri, 214, 225, 248. .

3 Quoted in Heiler, Christ and Indian Thought, 29.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 231

or an assumption of this, does violence to our deepest desires
both for ourselves and others. Those who are outside of the
privileged class must of necessity feel that they are for ever
excluded from the highest state of religious blessedness, whereas
the noblest of those who are inside the favoured group will be
depressed at the thought that others cannot share the privileges
which they themselves enjoy. 1 2

But can we accept this abnormality of over-emphasis upon
the intellect, with its indifference to evangelism, and the wider
abnormality of which it forms a part, according to which it is
assumed that ordinary experience is something to be got away
from and that if we are to reach identity with God it will be by
denial of the concrete wealth of our personality, by distrust or
depression of the faculties which we possess, by deadening
down or destruction of our desires, instead of by their sublima¬
tion? It seems impossible thus to reject the religious: validity
of our ordinary activities in their fullness. Religious salvation
means essentially the attainment of the health of the soul, the
expansion of the normal powers of the whole man. ‘A free life’,
as Prof. B. K. Shastri puts it, ‘ever seeks to be full in its freedom;
free life and full life are indeed interchangeable terms.’* It is
life and more life that we want, and not death, and our hearts
will turn instinctively to such a Revealer as can proclaim that
He came to give life and to give it more abundantly.

Thus we come by many ways to the conclusion that the
identity relationship between man and God, while it contains
within itself much attractiveness and beauty and power, and
while it describes significantly and valuably the emotional
resultant of the true religious attitude, yet, because it has to lay
aside so much, cannot adequately embody the fundamental

1 Prof. Wright has expressed himself vigorously on the relation between
this attitude and religious adequacy. 4 If a religion*, he says, ‘becomes the
private possession of a highly cultivated class, and is inaccessible in its
higher insights to the masses of men, it will be bound ultimately to fail. The
masses are in the majority, and the purer faith of the esoteric few will in turn
become corrupted by the baser notions of the many. Only through active
service of the needs of all can a religion permanently be successful in main¬
taining itself. And a religion cannot endure in its higher forms if it idly
regards the lower form of religion in the nation with complacent toleration
and makes no honest missionary effort to enlighten all and bring them up
to higher levels.* (Philosophy of Religion, 84.)

2 B. K. Shastri, 326.

232 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

conditions of religious experience. It may turn out to be true
that ‘the soul of man has not one centre but two; his own eternal
entity—and God’. 1

Let us try to reduce the relationship to its simplest terms, and
by analysis to discover its real nature. We prefer to proceed
along the lines of the knowledge relationship, and also practical
relationship, of subject and object. This seems to us inde¬
feasible; we cannot get beyond it, and do not require to get
beyond it, even for the sake of the fullest religious attainment.
Just as in the simplest act of knowledge a subject implies an
object and an object a subject, so must it be in religion. God is
our religious Object, and will for ever remain such; and we hold
that this relationship can satisfy our most intense religious
aspirations, not by way of identity, indeed, but by way of
communion.

Of course there are difficulties in the way of thinking of God
as Object. We must beware of likening Him to the ordinary
objects of sense, or of claiming that we can take up towards
Him the same attitude of predominance or even of equality that
we take up towards ordinary objects. But, on the other hand,
a completed form of religion certainly does not demand either
that the Subject should be fused with the Object or the Object
with the Subject. However much more than a mere object God
may be, and to whatever extent His reality may penetrate us or
stretch beyond our comprehension, yet these considerations
cannot destroy the distinction and yet connexion between us and
Him which is involved in the subject-object relation. We must
use our knowledge-giving faculties in a normal way; and in
religion this means that we must regard God as an Object dis¬
tinct from ourselves, however similar He may be to us in nature,
and however many bonds of connexion, closer than any we have
yet comprehended, remain to be discovered and appropriated

by us. -

Thus in laying emphasis upon the subject-object relation we
do not at all contradict our admission, made a few pages back,
that in true religion God cannot remain a mere external object.
Further—and this is much more important—we are quite
1 Cf. Hutton, Francis Thompson, 50.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 233

aware that we shall be immediately confronted with the negative
principle of Sankara, that we cannot ascribe subjective qualities
to the object or objective qualities to the subject; and also with
the positive central principle of the identity between the self
within and the self without. It will set our position therefore in
clearer light if we try to discover the real truth which underlies
these principles. Surely they need not carry with them the
denial of the relationship of subject and object. Rather are they
intended to negate any abruptness of contrast, any utterly dis¬
concerting dualism. They emphasize rightly and impressively
the spiritual kinship between us and God, and also between us
and the world which God has made. The first principle has an
effect dissolvent of differences, preventing us from setting the
world over against us in permanent rigid outlines, from accept¬
ing it in its particular actuality, and so failing to reach its inner
spiritual and friendly meaning, that meaning which proves its
kinship with ourselves. In the same way it also prevents us
from ‘concretizing’ and characterizing our own self with such
definiteness as to encourage a distancing distinction between it
and the universal Self. Thus the negative principle in its two¬
fold application prepares the way for the identification which
take place according to the positive central principle, tat tvam
asi. Now, though the explicit aim of this cautioning and recom¬
mendation may be the assertion of identity between ourselves
and the world-principle, all that is effectively done, and all that
ought to be done, is the breaking down of barriers and the re¬
moval of the feeling of alienation. ‘The saint’s rest’, as it has
been said, ‘comes not from the discovery of anything hitherto
unsuspected in himself, but rather because he has found that
his spiritual nature is not wandering in an inhospitable universe,
but has a home, and that in God. The rest lay not in what
he would be, but in what One already was—an actual present
fact.’ 1

But this does not mean that we are called upon to deny the
subject-object relation; it only means that we are encouraged to
discover and realize that there is a unity between ourselves and
the whole which is as overwhelmingly certain as the reality of
our individual self, and that no strangeness, no foreignness, can

1 Dunnin g y God and The Absolute,

234 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
continue to exist within that unity. We are asked to share with
intensity in that sympathy which binds together the things of
earth and the things of heaven, and also unites us with the rest
of the universe which we inhabit. Religiously it ought to mean
that the whole world is sacred for us, because it is the home of
God, and it should suggest that we also are the temple of his
spirit. But we do violence to the character of this intense con¬
sciousness of religious consummation when we compel it to
constitute also the conditions under which it may arise, when
we transform a feeling of closeness with the divine into an
intellectual assertion of identity and thus press it into the service
of a particular epistemological or metaphysical theory.

It is surely, e.g., an extreme to say that, because our know¬
ledge cannot be complete until we reach the point of view of
God, therefore complete knowledge involves the conclusion
that God and we are one. God’s perfect knowledge—which
may be taken as our regulative, but infinitely transcendent ideal
in the realm of knowledge—does not mean that God takes us up
into identity with Himself, but only that the relations between
Him and us are perfectly understood. Even when perfectly
understood, they do not cease to be real relations involving dis¬
tinguishable terms, and it does not follow that the two sides of
the relation should fuse into one. Because God knows us per¬
fectly, it does not follow that we are God. Moreover, we should
be careful not to interpret our regulative ideal wrongly. Be¬
cause the divine knowledge may be our ideal, this does not
necessarily imply that perfect human knowledge must be ex¬
actly the same as perfect divine knowledge. Our knowledge
may not be the knowledge wherewith God knows himself, but
for all that it may be none the less valid. Even at its highest our
completed knowledge is our own, not God’s. Thus the pre¬
supposition from which we try to reach an assertion of identity
along this line of thought is not particularly satisfactory even as
a starting-point, and does not legitimately reach the conclusion
intended. It is not possible to establish the position, as a deduc¬
tion from the ideal requirements of knowledge, that, in order to
know a thing, we must become that thing, or, in order to know
God, we must become God. That ‘dread point of Intercourse’,
however mysterious and unfathomable, in which the soul, tend-

SOME CONCLUSIONS 235

ihg upwards, ‘holds, is upheld by God’, is still intercourse, and

not fusion. .

When we are faithful to the subject-object relationship, we
find, on a direct analysis of experience, that it is quite unneces¬
sary and, indeed, impossible, to deny the reality of the subject
or to merge that reality, irrecoverably, into a larger Reality. In
fact it is just by descending into and affirming our own selves
that we get our fundamental sense of reality. The Vedanta
teaches this emphatically, but then goes on to assert that we
know our own reality only as merging, or as merged, in the
Universal Reality. It is this further step that we are unable to
take; the self which gives us our hold upon reality is an inde¬
feasible self. It is through the consciousness of our individual
self that we are able to extricate ourselves from that dreamlike
mood which is apt to creep over us when we first become aware
of the puzzling and often disconcerting character of our ex¬
perience. It is in the earnest quest of life which emerges in
connexion with our self-activity that we establish a sense of true
life, that we refuse to ‘take a dream for a truth’ and find that
‘The world and life’s too big to pass for a dream’. 1 Within our
active experience we reach definiteness and concreteness which
we cannot afterwards let go from us. As has been said, ‘Only
when we lose sight of this connexion of thought with action, can
we suppose ourselves able to rest content with appearances as a
substitute for what really is.’ 2 And, invertedly, Kirtikar admits
the truth of this principle when he says that ‘until the sense of
“I” has completely disappeared, man has no right to deny the
reality of the universe’, 3 which is equivalent to saying that,
so long as the sense of‘I’ remains, man cannot deny the reality
of the universe. We can prove illusion only theoretically or on
paper. In our activity we are brought into contact with a real
world and become growingly conscious of its reality as we deal
with its problems.

But this consciousness of the self, though indefeasible, is not
isolating in its effects. As has been said: ‘There is something
within us . . . which may be said to come into being only at the
approach of God.... The deep and solving idea is that the final

1 Cf. Browning, Statue and the Bust and Fra Lippo LippL

a Rogers, European and American Philosophy , 255* 3 Kirtikar, 4.

236 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
thing in the human soul is not that it is alone, but that it is in
eternal fellowship; that we have each one of us one final com¬
panion, and that final companion is God. That man is a duality.
That man is not a “thing in himself 55 . That he is a relationship.
That his soul is, you might say, a state of tension between his
conscious being and another. In short, that he lives and moves
and has his being in God. The unit of the human race is not
a person, it is that person’s communion with another. 51 In the
real essence of ourselves, especially in the real activity of our¬
selves, we reach beyond ourselves, and we do not do this in any
spirit of annexation. Because we have found so much of im¬
portance in the depths of ourselves, and because we have
recognized our essential kinship with the universal, we do not
claim.to be the universal. The fundamental significance of the
self within us does not warrant us in dragging all reality within
our subjectivity. Rather in our activity, especially in its noblest
aspirations, do we become conscious of outlets to a wider
reality. 'Having renounced the unworthy reality, I ought to
replace it by what is worthy of existence. 5 % In our moral striving
we are conscious of setting up an ideal, but at the same time we
know that this is not our own construction, but that we have
drawn it from a reality beyond ourselves. As Suso says, 'He
who finds the inward in the outward is a more spiritual man
than he who can only find the inward in the inward. 5 3 What we
supremely value is not merely ourselves; the good for which we
strive is part of the good of the universe. We are humbly and
reverently conscious of the great Other from whom our inspira¬
tion is derived. 'Self-realization 5 , as one writer has it, must be
balanced, not with a pantheistic, but with a transcendent con¬
ception of God, for only thus can a man be saved from the
worship of self to the worship of God . 5 4

And as our intensest subjective activity is sublimated into
worship, we are conscious of the Object of our worship, not as
ourselves, nor as the projected image of ourselves, but as some¬
thing beyond ourselves, immensely attractive and immensely
elevating. The essence of worship is the love of God, and love

1 Dr. Hutton, Francis Thompson, 108.

3 Solovyof, The Justification of the GW, 245.

3 Quoted in Hibbert Journal, Jan. 1925.

4 G. Gardiner, Vision and Vesture , 127.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 237

is not merely a subjective feeling. It is not directed towards our
own selves. It is directed outwards far more than inwards, to¬
wards that which is supremely valuable in the universe and in
ourselves, but is never merely ourselves, seen through the haze
of self-esteem rising from the mists of complacency.

And so in worship we pass, naturally and inevitably, from the
reality of the self to the reality of the Divine Object, recognizing
once again, and now especially in the sphere of religion, the
fundamental character of the subject-object relation. The love
that is worship and the worship that is love are alike impossible
except as a relation between two terms, and the relation cannot
be maintained if these are fused together into an identity. In
whatever way the inclination to this fusion manifests itself, it
renders true worship impossible. If the stress falls upon our¬
selves, it is obvious that we cannot make ourselves into an object
of worship. If we allow the stress to fall upon the object almost
exclusively, and permit ourselves to be merged in the object of
our adoration, it is equally obvious that we cannot offer the
worship, for we have left no foundation in ourselves upon which
we may set up our altars. Worship essentially implies a going
beyond ourselves in devotion towards and adoration of a Divine
Being from whom we all the while distinguish ourselves. The
adequate relationship can be established only if we approach it
with a vivid consciousness of the reality both of ourselves and
God. Subject and Object must both be given their rights in
religion as elsewhere.

But in speaking of the rights of the individual in this connexion
we must beware of the danger of irreverence, of which danger
the Vedanta has done so much to warn us. As already hinted,
we cannot claim for ourselves greater importance than, or even
equal importance with, the religious Object. While our relation
to God must be one of co-operation and confident response, it
must also be one of humility. The greater importance must be
attached to the Object. Prof. Paterson tells us that it must be
‘taken for granted by all who believe religion to be a reality that
God is the all-important member of the sacred association, and
that there has been a contribution from the divine side which

makes the religious relationship immeasurably to surpass, both
in content and in promise, the most intimate and enriching

238 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
form of human union’.* God is above us and beyond us, and in
our approach to Him we must lay our hands upon our mouths
and keep silence. It is here that we reach the truth of the
Vedantic emphasis upon the uselessness of our ordinary cate¬
gories of thought and understand the inner meaning of negation,
asceticism, and mystical self-forgetfulness and abandonment.
We approach God by the way of a sense of the insufficiency of
the finite self, as well as by way of a confidence m our limited
self-sufficiency. We are dependent as well as independent, and

our dependence is greater than our independence. .

It is here also that we reach the truth of the Vedantic reliance
upon authority which has seemed to some to be pressed to
extreme lengths. For if we believe in the greater and the abso¬
lute Value of God, and yet believe also in his kinship to us, we
are bound to take up the position of learners by slow degrees of
the mysteries of his divine nature and purposes. We come also
to the further confidence that in the course of the world’s history
God has not left himself without a witness, and that his revela¬
tions may be made through others as well as through ourselves,
a collective authority thus being constituted which we neglect
only at our great loss and peril. In learning this lesson of
humility we may begin to understand the truth of that saying
of Jesus Christ that those who would enter the Kingdom of
Heaven must become as little children. And as we realize that
we are not sufficient unto ourselves, we shall be the more ready
to place our confidence in those whom He has sent to be the
prophets and teachers of the world, and pre-eminently, it may
be, to believe in Him who came forth from God, and m whom
are ‘hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’. There is
much truth in the lines of T. E. Brown.

If thou wouldst empty all thyself of self
Like to a shell dishabited,

Then might he find thee on the ocean shelf
And say, ‘This is not dead’,

And fill thee with himself instead.

And we must not forget the complementary aspect of the truth.
Again the negative must always be in relation to a positive. It
is not because of the emptiness of God, or even because of his
1 Paterson, Nature of Religion, 448.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 239

indescribableness,butbecauseof his fullness of qualities and the
richness of his glory that we bow ourselves in adoration.

But while we are on our guard against irreverence and self-
assertion, we must also beware of another danger in this con¬
nexion, if we place excessive emphasis on the transcendence of
God. We must not carry humility and reverence to such an
extreme as spiritually to grovel in the dust before the majesty
of God. The faculties which we possess have after all been
given us by God. Some one has said that ‘genius in man is the
Godhead in distribution’; and ‘ what is true of genius is also true
0 f more ordinary qualifications’. 1 The Holy Spirit may mean
the collective and Godward aspect of the human soul as God
made it, and before man marred it, and the continuing help of
the Holy Spirit may symbolize the idea that the channel of
communication between God and man has never all down
through the ages been altogether closed, although man may
often have behaved and acted as if he were alone in a lonely
universe. Man has in his nature and set right within his heart
an indefeasible power to attain to God, and this power should
be his glory and his confidence. The summons to the old
Hebrew prophet was, ‘Son of man, stand upon thy feet’; and the
voice may be listened to as a challenge to all humanity.

Although their idea was not so much to cultivate humility
as to prepare the way for absorption, the danger is linked
with that depreciation of human personality which has so
often suggested itself in connexion with Vedantic teachers.
They have increased the danger by their over-emphasis upon
negation, but perhaps they have also suggested a way of guard¬
ing against it. We may develop further their teaching as to the
community of nature between us and God, and in such a way
as to provide the warning rather than increase the danger.
Through this community of nature we possess interpretative
fights in the universe; we are organic to the universe, as Prof.
Pringle-Pattison has so often and impressively told us. We can
claim to understand something of the nature of the Divine
Object just because He is not alien to us. Our typical actions,
both intellectual and practical, are significant of the nature
of the Absolute. Our thought-procedure, e.g., is one of the
1 -W. Robertson Nicoll, People and Books, z io.

240 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
constituent elements in reality-an aspect of the truth which we
do not think has been sufficiently recognized in Prof. Pringle-
Pattison’s otherwise extremely valuable criticism of the Hegelian
transformation of a logic into a metaphysic. Principal Oman
puts the matter thus: ‘The more we have stood upon our own
feet, and thought and felt and acted for ourselves, the more the
whole universe has responded to us. ,

Our interpretations must be based both on our humility and
our confidence. Because of our humility we shall think of God
as infinitely transcending us in resources, as corresponding only
to our best and not to our worst, and as ready to supply the
deficiencies indicated in our intellectual and practical limita¬
tions. But, because of our confidence, we feel that we may
regard the elements of our personality as revealing the nature
of God, that we may proceed from the best within to the best

without. r

And so, discriminatingly and humbly, we make use of our
own nature in order that through it we may know God. We
demand liberty for comprehensive interpretation, encouraged
thereto even by an intellectualist like Bradley, who admits that
‘if the main tendencies of our nature do- not reach consumma¬
tion in the Absolute, we cannot believe that we have attained to
perfection and truth’. 2 We cannot be content with thinking of
God, after the manner of the Vedantists of Sankara s school, as
merely intelligence or self-luminousness. Rather do we, follow¬
ing Ramanuja, tend to think of him as the abode of all auspicious
qualities, or—in more modern and more comprehensive phrase
-as the home of all values. Especially do we think it natural
and necessary to carry with us into the region of the Absolute,
our good—our actually accomplished good, and our most un¬
fettered anticipations of it. We claim interpretative rights for
our ideals as well as for our attainments. The exceeding
naturalness of this procedure of our thought is illustrated strik¬
ingly by Clutton Brock when he says, ‘The word provoked by
evil is “why ?”, but that word is never provoked by good. 3

.* S dmce ' Rdi 8 i 0 n /Zi£f% ^C&bTsdovyof, The Justification of
the C^o^24S^Tmthwhichis thinkable only and not^aF^^truth which

6861111:116 Wh016 ° f Uf ^ iS ^^ ", 7-

SOME CONCLUSIONS 241

This illuminating good we seek to comprehend in all its
variety, and, combining it with other qualities both intellectual
and aesthetic, we present it before our worshipping spirits in
the unity of a Personality whom we reverence as Divine. One
of the most impressive philosophies of the nineteenth century
has. taught us that perfect personality is in God only, 1 and this
apprehension of the essential character of cosmic reality corre¬
sponds to the felt need of humanity all down through the ages;
for, as Renan puts it, ‘Humanity seeks the idea, but it seeks it in
a person and not in an abstraction.’ a And the thought of the
French writer is an echo of the cry heard in an eastern land
from the lips of Tulsidas, ‘The worship of the impersonal laid
no hold upon my-heart.’ We refuse to be content with an
absolute blank, and we fill up the emptiness with qualities
drawn from our Own personality, having a not unwarrantable
confidence that these qualities are divine; for personality is our
most valuable possession, and we hold fast to a belief in the
ultimate identity of value and existence.

And in taking up this attitude to God, we think of Him above
all as active and of ‘the whole course of things as the expression
of his unceasing will’. 3 Prof. K. Shastri argues that even
Sankara would attribute activity to God, to the underlying real
Self, and that it is only change which he wishes to deny, Prof.
Shastri says: ‘Whenever Sankara denies agency to the self, it is
always the passive agency (if such a term can be used) of the
empirical self. Sankara never denies anywhere the free active
agency of the real Self.’ 4 But apart from the difficulty of recon¬
ciling the conceptions of activity and changelessness, we have
already seen reason to think that it would be difficult for Prof.
Shastri to establish such a position and that the prevailing
tendency of the Vedanta is almost to overlook this active aspect.
In any case it is pure or theoretical activity which Prof. Shastri
has in view in his particular argument rather than concretizing
activity having purposeful results. But, notwithstanding this,
we think that Prof. Shastri is not wholly wrong if we take into
account the spirit and implications of the terms used rather than
the explicit utterances in which these terms are embodied. For

1 Of. Lotze, Philosophy of Religion. * Marcus Aurelius, 582.

3 Cf. Wright, Philosophy of Religion, 432. 4 K. Shastri, 60.

' ' R

242 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
the unfolding of our conception of the divine^ activity it is
certainly possible to borrow terms from the Vedanta as well as
from the Gospel of St. John. We may, e.g., consider the divine
energy as bursting out of the charmed circle of mere thought
through the Word, the Logos, the sabda, uttered eternally as
well as in time. Through the Word of his Power, God makes the
primary transition from His thought to actuality. It reaches
embodiment first of all in sound—a mere vagueness, but, inas¬
much as it is the vehicle of possible ‘commands’, containing
within it the germs of the idea of purposiveness. It passes to
greater definiteness in the concrete existences of nature and of
history, revealing moral characteristics, and indicating progress,
in the greatness of promise for humanity when the Woi d be¬
came flesh’, and in potentiality for all men in the power given

to them ‘to become Sons of God’. ...

As we tkiuk of God along the lines of what is best within us
and in the light of historic revelations of his nature, we regard
the divine activity as dominated by love. This is in accordance
with our principle; for it is the love of God which expresses
most fully the truth of the subject-object relation in religion, as
well as the superior importance of the Object, and at the same
time the Vedantic truth of the nearness of God to men in the
affinity of nature and the incidence of grace. It is love which
saves us from the dangers of the identity conception, and by
establishing both terms of the relation, gives substance to the
idea of communion between God and man and prevents it from
being a mere sentimental human yearning.

And as applied to God, love means the outflowing activity of
God, in trustfulness, towards a world which He has made, and
expresses our belief that He gives to the world such reality that
He would not be God without it and without satisfying its
needs. He looks upon the particular as a trustee for the whole,
and Himself makes possible the fulfilment of the trust. The
conception seems to emerge from a metaphysical necessity; and
even Bradley, with all his intellectualistic tendency, admits its
validity as a deduction from an adequate conception of the
universe. ‘If other things remain equal,’ he says, ‘a definite
place in, and connexion with, the temporal system gives increase
of reality. Not to appear at all in the series of time, not to

SOME CONCLUSIONS 243

exhibit one’s nature in the field of existence, is to be false and
unreal. And to be more true, and to be more real, is, in some
way or other, to be more manifest outwardly. For the truer is
always the wider. There is a fair presumption that any truth
which cannot be exhibited at work, is for the most part untrue.’ 1
The same idea is expressed by a recent writer in words which
provide an association with, and a contrast to, the Yedantic con¬
ception, ‘All may be maya until one has found the Central
Reality; after that, reality, meaning, value, radiate to the last
electron and the remotest star, but above all and in a far higher
degree, to “the least of these my brethren”.’ 2

Now this expansion of reality, this concern of the centre for
the circumference, with an almost humanistic interest in the
individuals between the centre and the circumference, seems to
be best expressed through the conception of Divine Love. We
should stress the connexion between the divine love and
activity. We should not think of God as simply the attractive
object or magnet for human love, but as Himself descending in
the service and expression of His own personality, streaming
outwards in His loving-kindness, annihilating the separating
distance between the throne of His infinity and the turmoil of
existence. Under such a conception it is impossible for us to
entertain the idea of God as depreciating the world or treating
it as a mere dream or system of appearances. Philosophy (as
represented in a Bradley) and religious needs unite in helping
us to regard the world as the real condition of the existence of
real spirits and the possible environment of an Incarnation of
the Divine, both in humanity and in a very special sense. Here,
it seems to us, we approach the metaphysical idea which may
be taken to underly that central text of Christianity, ‘God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son—implying
an utter trust of the Divine in the world-conditions of humanity
and in humanity itself.

For religious purposes this metaphysically justified trust in
humanity is of the utmost importance. It arises from a full
acceptance of the principle—enunciated by Lotze and accepted
by Ward—that creation has little meaning unless it means the

1 Appearance and Reality , 381.

% Hibbert Journal, art. ‘Centripetal Realism", Oct. 1926.

244 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
creation of creators; and implies a full appreciation of the
significance of the individual both for time and for eternity, as
well as a refusal to merge him, undistinguished, in the divine
existence or to treat him as a mere phase of the divine conscious
ness. We feel, with Bishop Temple, that it is impossible that
things or persons should wholly constitute one another. This
principle also involves a recognition of the importance o^history
or in other words, a realization that the activities of individuals
in'relation to one another have had value m the past and have
had consequences continuing their effectiveness to the present
and into the future, which will be accepted by God as con¬
tributing to the unfolding of His purposes.

Nor do wethinkit illegitimate to pass from the idea of general
benevolent activity of God to special expression of His mercy.
This is simply to unfold the implication of the idea of com¬
munion between God and man and to press further pedan¬
tic idea of divine grace and pity, talcing these ideas out ° f the
region of mere contemplation of the miseries of man, out of the
region of sentimental compassion, and placing them as active
forces in the region of the actual. As Bradley says, ‘We must
not admit the possibility of an Absolute, perfect m apprehen-

Sn, yet resting tranquilly in pain.- The Divine Love aims at

communion, but, seeing that men are not perfect, and that
misusing their freedom, they have gone far astray in the paths
rf error and of sin, the love of God has to deal with the conse-
ouent suffering and evil; and communion can come only as a
result of restoration. In its idea of the unity of the human and
the divine the Vedanta suggests conditions for redemption; why
should not these conditions be constrained by concrete Divme
activity to yield up the possibilities that are m them. In the
Gita we find the idea that God incarnates Himself again and
again for. the benefit of suffering and sinning humanity; why
should not this idea of redemption be dissociated from some¬
what meaningless repetition and unreality, and dignified by-
connexion with a continuous, unitary, and actualized divine
purposefulness? An Indian writer says ‘Krishna s incarnation
fs a P camouflage, but it is for the well-being of the world.

Christus Veritas , 57*

3 Appearance and Reality , 158 *
3 B. K. Shastri, 393*

SOME CONCLUSIONS 245

Courtesy to the adherents of another faith would not permit us
deliberately to select such a term, but the important point is the
connexion in the mind of this writer between camouflage and
the well-being of the world. Such a connexion hardly seems to
provide a solid basis for religious faith, especially if it is possible,
as we have tried to show, that the camouflage may be trans¬
formed into an actuality. We would press the idea of redemp¬
tion back into the very heart of reality, and would take the
fullest meaning out of an earlier statement of the same writer
that ‘every item of creation is really an item in a great scheme
of God’s self-sacrifice for me and for the world 5 . 1 The highest
soul of the universe can be, nay, has been, proved to be not
indifferent to men, but takes their weakness up into his strength,
and sends downwards his strength and his purity to redeem
them from their sinfulness. Those who enter most fully into
the spirit of the Divine sacrifice are so inspired by it that they
desire to reproduce it in that evangelism which by word and
deed will proclaim the good news of salvation to others—even
to the most unlikely, the degraded, and the outcast, ‘the least
of these my brethren 5 , and will accompany their words by
service which will bring nearer the redemption of mankind.
As Prof. Radhakrishnan says, ‘The great souls of the world
address themselves to the task of rousing the divine possibilities
in the publicans and the sinners 5 , 3 and his thought corresponds
to that of the writer we have just been quoting from: ‘Individual
life engaged in sacrifice helps in the fulfilment of self and the
world. 5 3 This represents a great advance on the earlier attitude
of the commentator Madhusudan, who in speaking of ‘the vice
which enters so largely into the composition of human society 5 ,
says, ‘the least that one can do is entire indifference. If he can
help to cure ... it is sacrifice of a superior kind, but generally
•indifference is the best attitude to maintain. 54

Vedantism in relation to those aspects we have just been con¬
sidering does not seem to satisfy those of its adherents who are
most affected by modern influences. In general there seems to
be a striking parallel between the attitude of St. Augustine to
the philosophical teaching of his day and the possible attitude

1 lb. 195.

3 B. K. Shastri, 197.

3 The Hindu View of Life, 71.

4 Quoted in K. Shastri, 168.

24 6 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA_
of many modem thinkers in India and elsewhere to the Vedantic
view of life. Speaking of the Platonic books in Book VII,
Chapter 9, of his Confessions, St. Augustine says:

‘Therein I found that “in the beginning was the Word and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God”, and that God, the
Word of God, is the “true light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world”. But that “He came unto his own”,—this I found not
there. Also I found that God the Word “was born, not of flesh nor
of blood,nor of the will of man,but of God”. But that “the Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us”, this I found not there. I could
discover in these books, though it was expressed in other and in
varying phrases, that “the Son was in the form of the Father and
thought it not robbery to be equal with God”, because by nature He
was that same substance. But that “He emptied Himself, taking
upon Him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the Cross”—this those books do not contain. . .
For thou hast hidden these things from the wise, and revealed them
unto babes, that they that labour and are heavy laden might come
unto Him, and He might refresh them, because He is meek and lowly
in heart, and the meek He guideth in judgement, and the gentle He
teacheth His ways, looking upon our lowliness and troubles, and

forgiving all our sins.V

The Vedanta will afford such satisfaction to the human
spirit as it can give, mainly in the intellectual and practical
sphere, but concretely and practically, in the realm of history
and ethics, it seems to be too detached from the need of
men. It moves in worlds of its own not realized by ordinary
humanity; it does not* base itself on reality and from its
comprehension of reality derive strength for the deliverance
of men, nor does it view the problems of humanity with that
steady gaze which is necessary if a solution is to be discovered.
It is so completely baffled by speculative hindrances that it is
unready for the practical crises; a denial of reality does not pre-.
dispose our minds to reform. Just because it takes the way of
action as well as the way of thought, Christianity is not in like
measure prevented from getting into touch with actuality.
Ideally—though those who name the name of Christ have so
frequently failed to express His spirit—Christianity comes
nearer to the concrete problems of life and provides more fully
for relief from the sins and sufferings of men. But while it is m

SOME CONCLUSIONS 247

touch with the actual, it is not forgetful of the possible, it is not
content with a finished and limited vision, but one of its central
beliefs is that 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath
entered into the heart of man what God hath prepared for them
which love Him’. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but
certainly our vision of the future under the guidance of Chris¬
tianity does not include the gradual fading away of the outlines
of our personality into the being of God. The nearer we ap¬
proach to God, the steadier will be the concentration of our gaze
and the more rapt will be our communion, but we neither hope
nor desire that we shall become God.

Yet in this connecting of the possible and the actual, in this
linking of human potentiality with divine purposefulness, in the
proclamation of the possibility, and the hastening through
service of its realization, Christianity seems - to continue and
make available and valid for all men the central teaching of the
Vedanta. The great and fundamental truth of the latter—the
tat tvam asi —'That art Thou'—finds its counterpart and its
completion in the message of the New Testament, symbolized
in the name given to Him whom we believe to be at once Son
of God and Son of Man. The tat tvam asi seems like a question
sent out by abstract thought into vague immensity, and in the
name Immanuel, God with us, there comes back an answer which
satisfies also the longing of our hearts. Is it too much to believe
that in Christ India may find the goal of her searching, the satis¬
faction of her desire to realize the nearness of God, a conscious¬
ness of which is fundamental in the t^ching of the Vedanta?

Thus there would seem to be a remarkable affinity between
the Vedanta and much Christian thought and life, and a not
irrational basis for the idea that the Vedanta naturally reaches
forwards towards, and welcomes, the transformation which may
be wrought by the presentation of essential, and not merely
conventional, Christianity. But in this close relating of Chris¬
tianity and Vedantism there is need of great care. Premature
synthesis and sentimental breaking down of distinctions do more
harm than good. The Vedanta is not Christianity, and never
will be—simply as the Vedanta; but it is a very definite prepara¬
tion for it; not a preparation for the acceptance of the particular
dogmatic and institutional forms in which Christianity has often

2 4 8 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA
been presented, but for the Christ Himself. For we who belong
to nominally Christian communities cannot pretend that Christ
has not frequently been despised and rejected by us, neither can
we claim that we have allowed Him to appeal in all His essential
attractiveness to the Indian mind and heart. But we believe
and we are strengthened in our belief by a study of the Vedanta

_that when he does so appeal in simplicity and .directness, He

will in India draw the hearts of all men unto Him, and reveal
Himself as the Desire of the nation.

We ought to recognize more fully than we have as yet done
the service which Indian thought may render in the interpreta¬
tion of Christianity. As Max Muller said long ago, ‘Vedantic
teachings may bring us very near to the earliest Christian
philosophy, and help us to understand it, as it was understood
by the great thinkers of Alexandria’. 1 And what is true in
reference to the earliest Christian thought ought to be still
more true of the latest. The thought of India is influencing
more and more pervasively the thought of those who are occu¬
pied with the unfolding of the truth that is enshrined in Chris¬
tianity, and we should not be unready or unwilling to acknow¬
ledge the debt. We have a Saviour whom we believe to be the
Saviour of the world; and all men must help forward, in unity
of aim and accomplishment, the understanding of Him.

Further, we need to appreciate more fully than we have yet
done the general religious aptitude of India. In the very denials
of her thought, in the very intensity of her ascetic abnegation,
she has expressed something of the deepest need of the human
soul, that sense of loneliness and of mystery and of helplessness
over against the immensity of the universe, which are a prepara¬
tion for the overwhelming Presence of God. And as regards
developments of the religious consciousness which we may look
for in the future there is a good deal of truth in the words of
Prof. Vasvani of Bombay: ‘The West will come to the East to
learn its age-long wisdom, in order to develop its own mystical
sense, to look upon Nature no longer merely as a field of
scientific experiment, but as the sanctuary of the Spirit, to exer¬
cise itself in meditation so as to grasp the spirit of idealism and
realize the presence of God in social life.’*

1 Miiller, 5. S. 124. 2 Speech at the Berlin Religious Congress.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 249

There is need also of more serious and systematic attempts to
relate the thought of Christianity to the thought of India. Prof.

J. S. Mackenzie says, in the pages of a Western journal, Tor us
here at the present time there is probably nothing more impor¬
tant than the attempt to bring together the light that has been
gathered by Western science and that which has been set forth
by the saints and sages of the East 5 , and he adds pointedly,
‘perhaps it is chiefly in our religious and moral outlook that
mutual understanding and toleration is important’. 1 Christian
theologians have spent much labour in relating their doctrines
to the thought of Greece, but they have hardly made as yet
sufficient efforts to systematize their teaching or think out its
principles in relation to the philosophy of India. Perhaps Prof.
Heiler of Marburg lays too much stress on systematic elabora¬
tion, but nevertheless many will agree with him in his appeal
for sustained intellectual effort: Tor the lasting conquest of the
spiritual world of India/ he says, ‘the simple evangelical pro¬
clamation of the Word and life is not sufficient. For this there is
need also of a theological labour on a gigantic scale, which shall
link the fullness of the Christian revelation with the religious
and philosophical possessions of India. ... There is need of
a new Summa Theologica. . . . And this theological synthesis is
in relation to India more difficult and more important than it
was in the West (in the days of Aquinas) just for the reason that
the religious and philosophical treasures of India are far older
and richer than those of Greece. Without a theological work
of this kind Christianity will never succeed in becoming to the
Indian world what once it was to the Greek and Roman world.’ 3
And in similar fashion, but naturally with more intensity of
emphasis, an Indian theologian writes: ‘Jesus Christ came not
to destroy but to fulfil, and God who at sundry times and in
* divers places spake to His children in India, does not desire that
His word to our fathers should be made of none effect. In the
same manner as the ancient philosophy of the Greeks was con¬
secrated to Christ, will the Indian Church make an effort to
present her thought to the world, sanctified and made complete
by the power of the living Christ.’3

1 Hibbert Journal, art. ‘International Unity’, Oct. 1926.
a Heiler, Sadhu Sunder Singh, 228.

3 Coomaraswamy, International Review of Missions, art. ‘The Indian Church’.

250 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE VEDANTA

It is our belief that the living Christ will sanctify and make^
complete the religious thought of India. For centuries—more
centuries of civilization and culture than have been granted,
perhaps, to any other nation—her saints have been longing for
Him, and her thinkers, and not least the thinkers of the Vedanta,
have been thinking His thoughts. Often they have not known
His name, but they have been deeply conscious of His spirit,
and their age-long thirst for communion with the living God
and for realization of the nearness of His Presence will one
day be satisfied. Then will the words of Jesus Christ become
true also of India and her people: ‘Whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
unto everlasting life/ 1

f A* 'tL x

/'\5 ohn iv - I 4-

INDEX

Abnormality, 225, 229 f.

Absolute, 34, 45, 59, 62, 113, 128,
145, 153, 176, 182, 194, 201, 202,
205, 210, 211, 217, 224, 239, 240,

244*

Absorption, 120, 179, 213, 226, 239.
Abstraction, 1x6, 200, 202, 223, 226.
Academic aloofness, 402.

Acharya, 60, 61.

Acosmism, 193, 213.

Activity, Depreciation of, 182.
Activity of God, 216.

Activity of Knowledge, 122, 174.
Activity of Self, 109, no, 122, 241.
‘Adequate Ideas*, 192.

Advaita, 55, 58, 63, 98.

Agni, 12, 14.

Agnosticism, 135, 143, 230.
aham Brahma asmi, 31 .

Aitareya U., 23.

Aiyar, Mr. C. N. Krishnaswami, 52,
64.

ajhdna , 138, 141.
akasa , 48.
aldtasanti, 48.

Alavandar, 61.
alayavijhdna , 96.

Alexander, Prof., no, 155.

All-gods, 14,

Alloy, 34.

Alvars, 61,

Andnda , 112, 157.

Angus, Prof., 228.
annamaya , 33.

Anti-intellectualism, 228,
Antinomianism, 125, 174.
apard vidyd , 30, 113.

Apostolical succession, 37.
apurva, 162, 164,

Aranyakas, 5, 8, n.

Archer, 176, 182, 189.

A-nstotle, 78, 2x6, 229.

Arlen, Michael, 185.

Arulnandi, St., 100, 142.

Arundhati, 100.
a$at, 57, 131, *49, 201.

Asceticism, 23, 125, 174, 186.
Asmarathya, 43.

A4vagho§a, 94.

Atharvaveda, 6, 19, 20, 131.

Atman, 17-27, 31,. -132, 141, 193.
Atonement, 188.

Attributes, 194.

Audulomi, 43, 168.

Augustine, n, 246.

Authority, 27, 37, 50, 66, 75 f., 227,
238.

dvarana , 129, 140.
avidya, 30, 36, 128 f., 201.
avidya, as cosmical principle, 30,
48, 57, 138 f., 198.

Badarayana, 42, 71, 72.

Barnett, 36, 131, 138, 170.

Being, i, 17, 34, 57, m, 131, 184,
198, 201, 204, 224,

Being and non-Being, x, 18.

Benares, 54, 55.

Bergson, 226.
bhakti , 61, 62.

Bhagavatas, 44.

Bhdgavata Parana , 62.

Bhandarkar, Sir R. G., 72, 132.
Bhashya, 51.

Bhattacharya, M. L., 145.
Blasphemy, 177.

Bliss, 33-4, 157.

Bloomfield, 20.

Boehmen, Jacob, 106.

Bosanquet, 172, 210 f.

Bose, R. C., 174, 2x5.

Bradley, 108, 210 f., 225, 228, 240,
242.

Brahmacarin, 20.

Brahman, 16, 27, 31, 33, 34, 57, 63,
68, in, 120, 129, 142, 147, 155,
193-

Brahman, higher and lower, 67, 69 f.,
86, 129, 149 f., 169, 196, 212.
Brahman, with qualities, 43, 58, 62,
145, 163.

Brahman, without qualities, 43, 45,
57, 113, 134, 143, 172, 192-
Brahmanas, 5, 6, ii, 21.

Brahmans, 37, 216.

Brahma-sutraSy 39 f.

Breath, 16.

Brevity, 39.

Brihaddranyaka U., 23, 27, 34, 36,
38, 69, 86, 115, 125.

Brock, Clutton, 229, 240.

Brown, T. E., 221, 238.

Browning, 235,

Buddhism, 5-46, 53, 54, 58, 60, 70,
92 f., 101,119, 135, 137, 183*

252 INDEX

Caird, 189, 203.

Canon, 45.

Carpenter, Dr. J. Estlin, 5, 41, 78,
102, 142, 143.

Categories, 56, 103, 108, 136, 197,
204.

Categories, Use of lower, 226.
Causality, 56.

Chhdndogya U. } 23, 25, 26, 31, 32,
37, 80, 102.

Childlikeness, 115.

Christian Dogmatics, 41.
Christianity, 246.

city 112.

Class-distinctions, 37, 60.
Colebrooke, 73, 131.

Coleridge, 121.

Commentaries, 21, 40, 50.
Communion, 169, 236 f., 247.
Concentration, 75.

Conditions, external, 36 f., 73 f.
Conditions, internal, 38, 73 f.
Conditions, moral, 38.

Conditions, religious, 43.
Conjeeveram, 61.

Consciousness, Centrality of, 90.
Conservatism, 4.

Contemplation, 3, 38, 100, 123.
Continuity, 92.

Coomaraswamy, Dr., 249.
Cosmopolitanism, xi.

Cousin, xii.

Cowell, 131.

Creation and Cosmogony, 47, 62.
Creation of Creators, 204.

Creator, 57, 230.

Cumont, 15.

Cyclic Change, 184.

Darkness, 38, 49, 68, 91, 125, 225,
Das Gupta, Prof. S. N., xii, xiii, 3, 7,
10, 17, 22, 42, 44, 45, 47, 65, 72,
93 , 94 . 133, 138, 144, I 52 > 184.
Das Licht vom Osten } 71, 220.
Deception, 130.

Deification, 81.

Deism, 221.

Deliverance, 3, 75, 113, 172, 184.
Denotation of Words, 83.
Despotism, 25.

Destroyer, 58.

Deussen, 3, 31, 38, 39, 41, 42, 50, 72,
82, 85, 88, 89, 115, 116, 125, 126,
128, 131, 135, 140, 149, 156, 161,
173, 178, 218,

Devaydna, 58, 163, 168 f.
Development, 204.

Dewick, Rev. E. C., xiv.
dharma , 81, 164.

Discontent, 191, 220.

Discursive Understanding, 198.
Divine Companion, 236.
Dogmatism, 75, 89.

Dreaming State, 33, 48, 98, 117, 197,
213.

Dreamless Sleep, 32 n., 161, 197.
Dualism, 43, 44, 60, 63, 72.
Dunning, 233.

Dvivedi, Prof., xii.

Dyaus, 12.

Ecstasy, 20.

Egoity, 172, 220.
ekagratd, 3.

Election, 37.

Element in Absolute, 210.

Eleusinian Mysteries, 106.
Emancipation, 68.

Emerson, 1.

Empirical Self, 123.

Epistemology, 216.

Error, 206.

Esotericism, 50, 54, 67, 73, 80, 156.
Ethical Predicates, 183.

Ethical Struggle, 212.

Ethics, 172 f., 207.

Eucken, 189.

Evangelism, 230.

Evil, 184, 196, 207, 244.

Exotericism, 54, 60, 99, 156.
Expiation, 20.

External World, Belief in, 100.
Externality, 213, 221, 232.

Faith, 125.

Farquhar, Dr. J. N., xiv, 22, 42, 43,

44.83-

Fathers, Way of the, 58.

Fichte, 198 f.

Figurative and Literal, 87.

Finite and Infinite, 215.

Fire, Sacrificial, 13.

Frazer, 63, 139.

Freedom, 165, 185, 195, 196, 205,
213, 231.

Galloway, Principal, 183.

Garbe, 71.

Gardiner, 236.

Gaudapada, 46 f., 53, 93.

Gita, 7, 23, 42, 43 , 44 £, 7$, 127, 1 55 ,
244.

Good and Evil, 195, 214.

Goreh, Nehemiah, 11, 118.

Gough, 38, 71, 72, 115.

Govinda, 53, 93.

Grace, 38.

Greek Mysteries, 152.

INDEX

253

Greek Philosophy, i, 13.

Gross Body, 160.

Guru, 8, 53, 61, 81.

Haldane, Prof,, 209.

Hallucination, 142.

Happel, 130, 138, 148, 189.

Hauer, 20, 26, 31.

Heat, 161.

Hegel, 88, 201 f., 213, 216, 219.
Heiler, Prof., 249.

Henotheism, 14.

Heretics, 95.

Hibbert Journal, 79, 134.

History, 190.

Holy Spirit, 239.

Hopkins, Prof., 11.

Hume, 97.

Hutton, Dr. J. A., 185, 232, 236.
hyle, 15.

Hypothesis, 118.

Idea, The, 203.

Idealism, 16, 56, 88 f., 101, 157, 215.
Ideals, Evaporation of, 214.

Identity, 28, 31, 33, 84, no, in,
153 , 158, 159 , 176, 177 , 178, i 93 ,
196, 199, 201, 208, 209, 213, 215,
217, 219 f.

Ignorance, 57, 101, 129 f.

Illusion, 47, 48, 88, 99, 100, 130 f.,
193, 198, 200, 206, 207, 235,
Immanuel, 247.

Immortality, 13, 156 f., 196.
Incarnation, 244.

Indian Church, 249.

Indifference, 186, 195.

Individual Soul, 63, 67, 68 f., 91,
156 f., 179 -
Individuality, 55.

Indo-European Thought, 6.

Indra, 13, 32.

Inexhaustible and Inaccessible, 120,
* 53 *

Inexplicable, The, 144, 148.
Intellectual Love of God, 196.
Intellectualism, 108, no, 191 f., 204,
# 208, 210, 212, 213, 230.
Intelligibility, 39.

Intensity, 220.

Inter-subjective Intercourse, 138.
Intuition, 35, 77, 113, 223.
Irreverence, 237.

Isa U.y 23, 38, 68.
ishtdpurta, 164.

Isodore of Seville, 41.

Isolation, 235.

Isvara, 32, 57, 140, 149, 152, 154,
156, 168.

Isvara Krishna, 46.

Iverach, 191.

Jacobi, n, 71.

Jaimini, 42.

Jesus Christ, xiii, 238, 249.

Juana, 125.

Jndnayoga , 177.

John, St., 242, 250.

Joy, 134-

Juliana of Norwich, 106.

Kaladi, 51.

Kali, 54.
kalpa, 150.

Kant, 89, 135, 139, 144, 198, 209.
Kapalikas, 54.

Karikas, 46, 53.

Karma, 16, 125, 160, 162, 164 f.,
184, 196, 205.
karma-asraya, 162.
karma-marga, 54.

Karma Mlmamsa, 42.

Kasakritsna, 43.

Kdthaka U. } 23, 25, 26, 36, 38, 76,
80.

Kaushftaki U., 23, 32, 69, 145.
Kedarnath, 55.

Keith, Prof. Berriedale, 11, 15.

Kena U., 23, 123.

Kingdom of God, 123, 126, 188, 238.
Kirtikar, 55, 98, 102, 108, 146, 175,
180, 188, 201, 203, 217, 223, 235.
Knowledge, Two Orders of, 43, 62,
67, 112 f., 153, 169, 192, 204, 212.
kosa, 33.

Krishna, 44, 127.
kriyamdna, 170.

Kumarila Bhatta, 54, 60, 93, 99.

Laird, Prof., 119.

Lankdvatdra , 95.

Lasitude, 220, 222, 225.

Law, xs, I 9 S-

Law, Fulfilment of, 125.

Legalism, 186.

Leibniz, 192, 196!

Limiting Adjuncts, 58, 110, 128,
140, 160.

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 188.

Logical Judgement, 207.

Logos , 83, 241.

Lotze, 116, 143, 151, 166, 209, 241,
^ 43 -

Love, 196, 237, 242.

Macdonell, 38.

Macintosh, 205, 208.

Mackenzie, J. S., 249.

INDEX

McKenzie, J. } 81.

Madhusudan, 245.

Magic, 18, 48.

Mahabhdrata , 5.

Mahdnardyana £/., 23.

Maitrdyana U., 23.
manomaya , 33.
manas , 161.

Mandukya Kdrikd , 46.

Mandukya U., xii, 23, 34, 47 *

Marett, 83.

Maruts, 13.

Marvell, 97.

Materialism, 56.

Matter, 45, 149* , ,

Maya, 29, 43, 47 , 57 , 59 , 67, 7 ° W
91, 119, 127, 128 f., 194, 198, 201,
203, 243.

Maya , Relation to avidya, 143*
Means and Ends, 186.

Medievalism, 41.

Mercy, 244.

Merejkowski, 148, 171.

Merit, 122, x 74 *

Mimamsd Sutras , 50, 83.

Mnemonics, 40, 50.

Momentariness, 92, 96.

Monism, 36, 44, 45 , 46, 55 , 61, 64,
100, 102, 192, 213.

Moral Substratum of Soul, 162.
Muir, 77.

Mukhya Prana, 161.

Muller, Max, 1, xi, 14, 38, 42, 4 <>,
63, 65, 71, 103, 115, 133, 135 , 144 ,
181, 222, 248.

Mundaka U., 23, 86, 87, 105, 113,
216.

Mutts, 55.

Mysterium tremendum , 2, 16.
Mystery, 31, 139, 444 *

Mysticism, 106, 108, 120, 187, 221,
223, 238.

Myths, 2.

Nachicetas, 26.

Names and Forms, 29, 98, 103, 129,
157 *

Naturalism, 58, 213.

Necessity, 195.

Negative Tendency, 13, 18, 24, 28,
34. 35. 45. 49. 55, 68, 112, 148,
186, 189, 207, 219, 223, 238.
neti, neti, 35, 112.

New Testament, 41, 114, 190, 207.
Newman, 3.

Nirgunam Brahman, 69 f.
Nominalists, 29.

Non-difference, 160.

Nothingness, 96, 112, 201.

Object, The Divine, 239.

Objective Qualities, 56.

Objective Reference in Ethics, 178,
180, 187.

Oldenberg, 15.

Om, 4, 83.

Oman, Principal, 240.

Opinion, 131.

Ordinary Experience, World of, 35,
48, 57, 92, 94 > ii 3 » I 35 » 149 ,

224.

Organs of Sense, 161.

Other, The, 236.

Otherness, 215.

Otto, Dr. Rudolf, 2, 16, 59, 91, 198.

Pal, Mr. D. N., 52, 64, 81, 117, 142.
Pantheism, 4.

Pantheism and the Value of Life , 44,
67, 69, 147, 189, 206.

Para-Brahman, 58.
paramdrthika, 67.
paravidya , 30, 113, 169.
parindmavdda , 72, 132.

Parjanya, 13, 165.

Parmenides, 1, 48.

Passages, Order of, 69.

Passivity, 4, 38.

Paterson, Prof. W. P„ 83, 222, 225;
237, 238.

Paul, St., 125, 173 -
Penance, 17.

Perfection, 172, 188, 2x1, 214.
Personality, 158, 216, 231, 241.
Personality, Depreciation of, 187,

205..

Pessimism, 24, 184.

Peter the Lombard, 41.

Phenomenal, 57, 96, 136.
Philosophy and Religion, 4 > 5 *
Philosophy, Modern, 191 f.
Philosophical point of view, 114.
Physical, Dominance of, 227.
pitriyana , 58, 163.

Plato, xi, 1, 2, 131.

Play, 133*

Plotinus, 223.

Plurality, 55, 120, 145, 211, 222.
Poe, E. A., 143.

Polarization, 129.

Poussin, 46, 93,

Prajapati, 14, 32.
prakdra , 63.
pralaya , 62, 149.
pranamaya , 33.
pranas, 165, 171.
prdrabdha , 170.

Prasna U., 23, 56, 82.
Prasthdnatraya , 39, 44, 45 *

INDEX ■ 25S

Prayer, 16.

Priest, 28.

Pringle-Pattison, Prof., 119, iso,
134, 155, 196, 202, 203, 205, 208,

209, 239.

Progress, 181, 184, 214.

Projection, 181.

Puranas, 61.

Purity and Purification, 38, 12s, 188,
Purpose, 134.
purusha, 16.

Purushottama Misra, 118.
purvapaksha, 87.

Purvapaksha, Great , 90.

Quietism, 127.

Radhakrishnan, Prof. S., xiii, 21, 22,
35 , 36 , 57 , 72 , 78, 94 , n°,

143, 144, 155, 175, 177, 180, 183,

210, 245.
rag, 10, 51.

Ramanuja, 7, 41,43, 5 ° f*» 65, 84, 89,
120, 134, 141, 145 , 149 , ISO, 157 ,
158, 168, 176, 187, 192, 196.
Ranade, 19, 23.

Rashdall, 175.

Realism, 45, 60, 90, 101, 106, 157.
Reality, 18, 84, 113, 140, 210, 226.
Redemption, 190, 244.

Religion and Philosophy, 216 f.
Religious Aptitude of India, 248.
Religious Consciousness, 56.
Religious Relationship, 201, 215.
Religious Test Misleading, 216,
Religious Test Superfluous, 215.
Religious Value of Vedanta, 215 f.
Renan, 191, 241.

Responsibility, 184.

Revelation, 113.

Reverence, 239.

Reward, 188.

JRigveda , 6-12 f., 19, 37, I 3°*

Rishis, 82.

Pita, 15, 164.

Ritualism, 13, 28, 58, 122, 124.
Rivers and sea metaphor, 36.

* Rogers, Prof., 195, 235.

Roman Catholic Church, 79.

Rope and Snake, 142.

Russell, Bertrand, 105, 121, 209,
210 .

&abda , 202.

Sacrifice, 15, 27, 28, 24$.

Sagunam Brahman, 69 f., 149 f.
Saint, 225, 226.

Salvation, 125, 199.

Samaveda, 6, 19.

samchita , 170.
samsara , 139, 166, 186.

Sankara, passim.

Sankara and Buddhism, 92 f.

Sankara and James Ward, 109.
Sankara, Idealistic Attitude, 88.
Sankara, Life of, 51.

Sankara Method, 85.

Sankara Orthodoxy, 65.

Sankara, Pre-eminence of, 7 f., 54 -
Sankara, Summary of Teaching,
55 f-

Sankara-bhashya , 65.

Sankhya, 45.

Sdhkhya Kdrikds , 46.
sannyasl, 53,

Santayana, 195.

§ariraka Sutras, 39 f.

Sarvastivadins, 95.
sat, 57, i3L 149 , 201.

Scepticism, 224, 225, 227.

Schilling, 199.

Scholastics, 37, 77.

Scientific Point of View, 114-
Secret Doctrine, 22, 37.

Self, Reality of, 99, 193, 225.

Sen, Mr. P. N., 7, 64, 129.
‘Sentences’, 41.

‘Service’ God, 113.

Seth, 206.

Shastri, Prof. B. K., 18, 63, 104, 119,
125, 179, S29, 231.

Shastri, Prof. K., 151, 15s, * 74 , 183,
244.

Shastri, Prof. P. D., 17, 49 , 7 *> r 3 °,
133, 140/

Sheaths, 33, 58.

Siddhdnta Sutras , 87.

Sin, 244.

Sins of Ignorance, 12.

Siva, 23, 54.
smriti, 77.

Social Ethics, 179*

Social Service, 126, 188, 199, 207.
Society, 124.

Solovyof, 125, 137 , 179 , 181, 236,
240.

Soma, 13.

Space, 56, 101, 135, 221.
Speculative Freedom, 85. ,

Speculative Interest, 26.

Spinoza, 75, 180, 191 f., 213, 216.
Spirituality, 36.

&nbhdshya, 62.

Sriharsha, 229.

Sri-perumbudur, 60.

Srfrangam, 60, 61.

Sri-Vaishnava, 60.
iruti, 77.

256

INDEX

Stages, Four, 124.

Subject and Object, 106, 111, 215,
232 f., 237, 242.

Subjective Qualities, 34, 109, 233.
Subjectivity, r6.

Substance r 119.

Subtle Body, 160.

Sudras, 37, 60, 73.

Suffering, 200, 208, 244.
Superstition, 227.

Supreme Person, 59.

Surya, 13.

Suso, 236.

Sutra Form, 8.

Svetdsvatara ZJ., 23, 29, 38, 44.
Symbolism, 36, 117, 148.

Tagore, Dr. Rabindranath, 134, 144,
i 55 > 230.

Taittirlya U., 22, 149.
tapas, 17, 27.

tat tvam asi, 31, 104, 169, 216, 221,
333 > 247 . \ . .

Tattvabhushan, Pandit, $8, 84, 92,
97, J27.

Teacher, Place^.,3-7, 47, 73, 80, 81.

X emple, Bish.0^229, 2^4.

Theism, 43. ' ' ‘

Theodicy, 184.

Thibaut, 42, 43, 44, 65, 67, 71, 140,
147,160.

Thompson, Frances, 185.

Thompson, Prof. J. Arthur, 85, 115.
Thought, Centrality of, 202.

Tilak, 11.

Time, 56, 101, 200, 221..

’ Tradition, 4, 84, 228.

Transcendence in Ethics and Re¬
ligion, 178, 180.

Transmigration, 19, 24, iafe, 167 f.
Trichinopoly, 60.

Tulsidas, 241.
turlya, 33.

Uddna, 94.

Ultimate, The, 101 f., 194, 200, 220.
Unity, Concept of, 36.

Unity, Conditions of Search, 36.
Unity of Apperception, 209.

Unity, Search after, 14, 36.

Universal, 56.

Unknowable, 35,

Unmanz, 33.

upddhis, 129, 139, 140, 160.
Upanishads, xii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 21, 34,
36, 65, 86, 116, 131, 177, 221.
Upanishads, Meaning of Name, 22.
Upanishads, Vedantic Ideas in, 21 f.

y ^AF | 4

/*■ '

Urquhasrt, Margaret M., 81.
Usas, 12, 'J3.

Vaiseshikas, 95, 96.

Vaishnava Sects, 60, 61, 63.
Vaisvanara, 32.

Vaitathya , 47.

Values, 183, 189, 190, 237, 238.
VSnaprastha, 6.

Varuna, 12, 13.

Vasu, Prof. A. C., 47.

Vasudeva, 45.

Vasvani, Prof., 248.

Vata, 13.

Vedanta, passim.

Vedanta, Meaning of Name, 7.
Vedanta, Unity of Development,
Vedanta Sutras, 6, 7, 21, 39 f.,
60, 62, 65, 85, 90, 95, 102, 1
131, 137, 139, 150.

Vedanta Sutras, Date of, 42.
Vedantist, Typical, 64.

Vedas, 1, 5, 6, 11 f., 37, 46, 60.
Vedas, Date of, 11.

Vedas, Fundamental Ideas in, 11
vidyd, 62.

vijndnamaya, 11, 33,

Vijnanavdda, 97.
viksepa, 129, 140.

Virat, 32.
viseshyam, 31.

Visishtadvaita, 63.

Vishnu, 13, 44, 45, 63.
Vi^vakarman, 14.

Vivartavada, 72, 132.
Vivekananda, Swami, 143, 176.
Void, 47, 48.

Vraty|i, 20.

Vym y 42 , # S 4 , 82. ..

Vydvahdrika Existence, 57, 67.

Waking Life, 97, 197.

Ward, 108, 109 243.

Wenley, 173.

Wilde, Oscar, 224.

Will, Cosmic, 200.

Women, Place of, 37.

Word, 83, 203.

Wordsworth, 106, 186, 220, 221.
Works, 38, 12i f., 169, 188.
Worsley, 218.

Wright, Prof., 231, 241.

Yadavaprakasa, 61.

Yajurveda, 6, 19.

Yama, 13, 163.

Yoga, 23, 222.

Yogi, 20, 45.

d>erfluidum, 15.