The Doctrine of the Upanishads -1 : Swami Krishnananda.

=========================================================================

Friday, 02 June, 2023. 06:40,

Post-1.

========================================================================

Human life is a composite continuum of varying phases of consciousness, of different processes of thought. It comprises a few links in the long chain of development, a few rungs in the lofty ladder of evolution. It is a series of conditions, becomings, events, which ever stretch beyond themselves and point to something remote, something wider and yet unattained. Life is, therefore, an ever-increasing organisation of consciousness, never resting in itself, never satisfied, but always hoping to be completed in a state of existence which is dimly foreshadowed in the present experience of the individual. Every condition of experience appears to be real and complete when it takes the role of being the one immediately above that which is directly being experienced in consciousness. It reveals its unsatisfactory character when it becomes the content of immediate experience. Unachieved ends seem to promise fulfilment and perfection, but they become pointers to another unachieved state when they are actually experienced. This shows that life is only a step, a stage, means, and not the final goal, destination or end of endeavour. Every lower stage of life appears to be unreal in a higher stage, though no stage is unreal from the point of view of its own temporary existence. Though all stages are real in a sense, they have differing values, and so we are to admit degrees in reality. The higher includes and transcends the lower; the higher is the fulfilment of the lower, and the sense of satisfaction is more in the higher than in the lower. The aim of life is to experience in immediate consciousness the highest state of reality, i.e., the Ultimate Reality, where all aspirations find their consummation and the supreme purpose of life reaches its realisation.

Philosophy starts with the recognition of the inadequacy of the present state of life. It is the outcome of the discovery that something beyond human life does exist. Dissatisfaction with what is presented to the empirical consciousness is the source of all speculation and spiritual effort. The method adopted in realising the Supreme Being is dependent on the conception of it which one has. The conception of reality is a form of the mental consciousness objectified as the complement of the subjective need or the extent to which incompleteness is felt in the depths of the individual. Thus, conceptions of the nature of reality are bound to differ from one another, as different persons feel dissatisfaction in varying intensities. We have, therefore, to consider the views which directly influence the methods of approach to reality.

EXISTENCE AND VALUE :

The problem of reality has direct bearing on that of existence and value. Existence is what is independent of everything else, different from relations of every kind. Value is the nature of existence as it is related to a perceiving subject; it is the manner in which an external existence becomes a content of an internal consciousness. An object as cognised or perceived is, therefore, a value, and not an existence as such. But the true nature of the object, without being related to a cogniser, is its existence. The problem of perception involves the determination of the nature of existence and value. For, on this depends the worth of perceptive knowledge. What do we really perceive? Is it only an illusion, an error, or is it a fact in itself? 

Do we grasp phantoms in sense-perception or do we have real and genuine knowledge of anything truly existent? The investigation of this phenomenon of the relation between existence and value, truth and error, leads one to various kinds of metaphysical and epistemological speculations. The Upanishads synthesise all empirical views of reality, dive deep into the facts of experience and proclaim what is most authoritative, direct and in harmony with the various phenomena of the universe. To understand the exact value of the philosophical position of the declarations of the Upanishads, we may proceed from the first views of things held by those who depend on what is given on the surface of human experience.

*****

To be continued

=========================================================================